This sermon delves into the significance of prayer in the Word of God, emphasizing the importance of developing intimacy with God through prayer passages in the New Testament. It explores the high priestly ministry of Christ in prayer, praying in the name of Jesus, and the manifestation of God's name in our lives. The sermon also touches on the concept of praying through various aspects of Christ's prayer life and the need for believers to enter into the inner chamber of prayer for personal intimacy with God.

I'd like to start by saying that the word of God is the second most and they become the roof to the other, the tabernacle, because you see, when John in his gospel said, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only, the covenant of the Father, the word dwelt in the Greek text, it's the same word you find in the book of Revelation, when it says the tabernacle of God is most in people, and, oh you say there are 24 words, yeah, and you've just used 6 and you've just used 12, so there are 6 of those words, what are you saying about those words? I'm telling you that those words that I found the least, to me they become the ropes of this tabernacle of prayer. Now brother and sister, you need to get this. You see, this tabernacle, these 24 words, there are 248 prayer passages in the New Testament that are speaking about developing intimacy with God, telling us that God is the initiator of prayer, and telling us those 248 passages come, and you know when we put the tabernacle up, they come in and they're running from all directions, out of the book of Revelation, and the gospel of Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and John, and Acts, and they are running out, they're popping out of those books, running underneath this tabernacle, 248 of them, and they say, we are speaking to you about intimacy with God, oh man, and so if we are able to somehow put our arms around those 248 passages, 12 aspects of the prayer life of Christ is coming to the surface. What does it mean to pray in the Word of God? You can't pray in the Word of God unless you live in the Word of God. What does it mean to pray in the Holy Spirit? There's this key passage saying, I'm the one that is telling you what it means to pray in the realm of the Spirit, but don't leave me on my own. Can I tell you about 248 passages? There are about 14 passages that are coming to us saying the Holy Spirit says, I'm part of what it means to learn what it means to pray in the Spirit. What is the high priestly ministry of Christ in prayer? What does it mean to pray in the name of Jesus? Why did Jesus pray in John chapter 17 and He said, Father, I've manifested Your name. How is these manifestations of the name of God manifested in the life of Christ and began to flow into the New Testament? What does it mean to pray through 12 of them? Let me tell you where we are going. We haven't started yet, you know. Oh, brethren and sisters, this is so rich. This is so incredible. And this becomes part of your life. It will change your life for eternity. How does this flow out in our relationships with God? Let me try to explain to you. You see, Jesus came in Matthew chapter 6 and He introduced to them an incredible concept. He turned to those disciples because you see, here is the problem. At that point, the Holy Spirit has not yet come. You say, when did the Holy Spirit come? The Holy, Jesus said in John chapter 7, you remember, on the last day of the feast, He said, on the last day of the feast, He said, if anyone fears, He said, let him come unto Me. He said, he that believeth unto Me, as the Scripture says, He said, rivers of living water shall flow from the innermost of every being. Now, why did He say that? John said, He said that because of the Spirit. The Spirit was not yet given because Christ was not yet glorified. So you say, what's the Holy Spirit then? Of course the Holy Spirit was there. I mean, the Holy Spirit was in the Old Testament. But people were not enthralled by the Holy Spirit the way that they were after the day of Pentecost. The Spirit of God came upon them, they were moved by the Spirit of God, they were gifted, and they were just ecstatic of the work of the Spirit of God. And now we are in the intermediate between the Old and the New Testament. We are in this period of years where the Spirit of God has not yet come, but it doesn't mean that He wasn't there. Because, I mean, when the Holy Spirit came upon the life of Christ in the form of the dove, and by the way, the dove speaks of purity, it speaks of passion, it speaks of power, and it speaks of peace, you know. And the Spirit of God came upon the life of Christ, when you look at it this evening, in the form of a dove. You know, there are four kinds of doves in Israel that do not possess what we speak of as the gull or the chicken, the bitter part. I mean, there was no sin in the life of Christ, you know, He was anointed for service. Service of His birth and supernatural in His life. But the Spirit has not yet come yet. So Christ turned to His disciples, and He said, you know what's going to happen? That's why He said to them in John 14, it is to your advantage that I go away, because if I do not go away, the Spirit cannot come. And He said, when the Spirit of God will come, you will do greater things than me. So at that point, the Spirit of God didn't come. He came on the day of Pentecost. And yet Jesus turned to them and He said to them, He said, when you're going to learn the language of prayer in Matthew chapter 6, He said, this is the way it's going to work. He said, you are going to discover an inner chamber. I love this. Do you remember what He said? He said, you need to go, I love the old translation, He said, you need to go into your closet. I'm not sure if I like the word, I always feel that someone is chaining me up, you know. You know, my friend out there in the West Coast is a doctor, and he came flying into the town one day to go to the hospital, and when he looked at the mirror, the RCMP fellow was behind him, and he stopped at the traffic light, and when he stopped at the traffic light, the RCMP stopped next to him, and he took out his stethoscope, and he showed it to the RCMP, and the RCMP officer took out his handcuffs and showed it to him. But this word, closet, let me explain this to you. You know, this word is found four times in the New Testament, it means two things, and oh, I want you to try and get this as one. First of all, it's speaking of a secret den, and secondly, it's speaking of a storehouse. Now, let me just stop here, because this is our problem, you see. I've tried to understand this word for years, because Jesus said, when you pray, enter into this inner chamber, He said, close the door, He said, pray to your Father who is in secret, He said, your Father who sees in secret shall reward you openly. Your Father know of what you need even before you ask Him. Oh, what a great statement. And we say, oh, you know, this is simple, let me try to apply it. It means, I need to go into a place, I need to close the door, this is personal intimacy with God. And brother and sister, I kind of accept that, but you know, this goes somewhat deeper than that. You see what I mean? Well, let me try to explain to you something. You see, the Gospel of Matthew was predominantly, I shouldn't say predominantly, but there was a great emphasis upon these Jewish disciples. And here Christ came in Matthew's Gospel, and He said to them, now, when you learn the language of prayer, because they saw it in His life, I mean, it was unreal. He was just walking prayer. He disappeared and spent the night in the presence of His Father, and the next morning He came walking on the water. And then He went and spent 19 active references to His prayer life. He went and He spent a night in prayer, and the next morning He chose His disciples. And there are these incidents in the life of Christ where He just withdrew, and His life became withdrawn, and the intimacy of His Father. And now He turned to them, and He said to them, He said, they saw it in His life, they couldn't figure it out, when the disciple in Luke chapter 11 said, teach us to pray, they never asked Jesus to teach them how to preach, you know? They never asked Him to teach them how to raise money, you know, all this kind of stuff, and ask Him, is this the right program, or is this the right method? No, no, no, no. They saw an intimacy, and it brought into them a sensation of desperation, they wanted to know what's going on. And He said, you need an interchanger. I tried to collect books on prayer for the last 40 years, at some point I had about 800 in my library, and in the past it began to steal away. So my wife got a thing that she puts in, she said, borrow from Gerardi Toy, please don't keep. And I have all these books, I don't know if I find one or two of those books that answer this question of this interchanger thing. Until I began to read some of the early church fathers, men like Josephus, and some of those men. And I came across one of them, and they put a seed in my heart. And you say, what did they say? They said, when Christ came and He looked at His disciples and He said to them, I want you to have this interchanger. I want you to develop this reality of an intimacy with me that's going to develop, that's going to demand a supernatural explanation. That's how they tell you the greatness of the presence of God. The early church fathers made a statement, they said, those Jewish disciples, the moment when Jesus said that, and they tried to comprehend it, and in the three and a half years that they followed Christ, they said somehow they must have come to an understanding that there was a place in the Old Testament where God revealed Himself. Because the essence of why Jesus said that is because He was talking about the revelation of God on a consistent basis. And He made this statement, and they said, there was a place in the Old Testament where God revealed Himself. And so I was thinking, now what are they going to say to me? And then they said, now the place in the Old Testament was called the tabernacle of God. God said to Moses, Moses, I want you to build a tabernacle. And so you remember in Exodus how God gave Moses the incredible dynamics of this tabernacle of what it's going to, and God said to Moses, this is the way it's going to look. And then I said, they continued, then God suddenly said to Moses, Moses, as this tabernacle becomes a reality, because I want to dwell amongst my people, Moses, there is going to be a place in this tabernacle. It's going to be the most sacred place. And God said to Moses, Moses, I want you to call this the holiest of all. It's not going to be a large area of the tabernacle of God, but this holiest of all will be separated. It's the most sacred place. And He said, Moses, in this holiest of all, there will be the Ark of the Covenant. And there in the Ark of the Covenant are the 10 words of God to Moses. And then on the Ark of the Covenant was the mercy sea, covered with gold. And there were the seraphims in the holiest of all, the staff of Aaron, the high priest. And there will be the manna that was provided there in the Ark of the Covenant. And God said, this is the place, this is the most sacred place. And this is the place where only once a year the high priest, who was physically blameless, morally blameless, spiritually blameless, and the understanding of the Old Testament justification, once a year the high priest would be allowed to enter into this most sacred place, not without blood, because he's going to sprinkle the blood seven times. And He's going to have His incredible garments. And as He moved in the holiest of all, when the people of Israel on the great day of the atonement, when He made reconciliation for the sins of the people of God, and as He moved with those incredible garments, He's going to have His bells on His shoulders as He sprinkled the blood. Why would they be there? They will be there because the people would know that He's still alive. He said, it's the kind of glory of God. And oh, you remember what happened? He had a rope around His waist. Why was there a rope around His waist? Well, I'll tell you why. Because if something would have happened to Him in the holiest of all, no one else could have intervened. If something had happened to Him, they would have been able to drag Him out of the holiest of all, this most sacred place. What does that have to do with you and me? Absolutely everything. You remember what happened when Jesus died on the cross? You remember? There were a number of things that took place. But oh, brother and sister, you remember, the Bible says, when He cried out and said, it is finished, the veil of the temple was framed, not from the bottom to the top. You know, the temple was interesting. It used to be 40 feet, and then Herod came and it became 60 feet. And this veil of the temple, they say it was about three inches thick, and they set two sets of oxen on both sides, wouldn't have been able to pull it apart. But the moment when Jesus died, when He cried out, it is done. The Bible says, one of the things that happened, a number of things happened, but one of the things that happened is that the veil of the temple was framed from the top to the bottom. Wow, you say, what do you say? I tell you what, the way into the holiest is open. Amen. Ah, you say, I understand that. What are the implications? Oh, brother and sister, listen to the writer to the Hebrews. He said, God has given us freedom to enter into this inner chamber. God has given us freedom to enter into the holiest through the blood of Jesus by renewing the way which He has consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say His flesh. And having a high priest over the house of God, this is Hebrews chapter 10, having a high priest over the house of God, He said, let us draw near with a true heart, full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. He said, let us draw near. Have you discovered the inner chamber? You see, I work with pastors and people in leadership, and you know, I began to do this stuff with a fellow by the name of Ravi Zachariah years ago, and he's so brilliant, they choose him for his brilliance and me for my stupidity. Ravi came to me and he said, can you come and spend five days with my staff in Dubai? And I said, why do you want me to do it? He said, I long to get to know your heart. I said, it's not the words that we say, it's the language of our hearts. And I spent my life with people in leadership, and I don't want you to misunderstand me, the average pastor in North America spends three to five minutes alone with God three or four times a week. And I'm thankful that this doesn't happen everywhere, but I tell you, I go to places where the churches in the house would miss. You know, who Rashid Bunar, the Puritan who was the brother of Andrew Bunar, Rashid Bunar used to say, I went to look for the world and I found it in the church, and I went to look for the church and I found it in the world. And I spend my life with these men of ministry, I love them. I just love them. They go through our seminaries and our Bible colleges, great, wonderful, they learn all the things that we need to learn, but we never teach them how to walk with God. I can't find four seminaries in the whole of North America that has a specific course on how to teach students how to walk with God. And they came, you know, in desperation. And they said, we've tried every trick in the book, we've tried every method, we've tried every program, I've stolen every sermon that I can get on the internet, I've tried absolutely everything. And they said, I'm sitting with a church full of people, but I long for a church that will be full of people that will be full of God. They said, what is it going to cost? I said, it's going to cost you absolutely everything. And then they said, can you help us? I said, I don't know if I can do it, but maybe we can do it together. It's a two-way street. We began to look at time management. And I said to them, can you spend 30 minutes alone with God, five mornings of the week? And they said, yes, I think I can. And then they turned to me in agony and said, but I didn't know what I would do. And this is really difficult. And I said, well, let's begin to work on it. We look at the reasons, we look at the requirements, we look at the regulations. And I began to walk alongside them as you do that. It's wonderful. Let me ask you a question. Can you find out who's cutting someone's head off there? We keep thinking of ISIS. That's great. Okay. We need the guys outside. But let me take you into this. So you say, what do we do? You see, the revelation is this, an inner chamber. But brother and sister, we need to find out what happens there. Because you're sitting here this morning, and we communicate to one another, how are we going to do that in our relationships with God? So you say, I want to meet with God. I want to spend some time with God. I want to learn the secret of this inner chamber. Now, there's two things I want to communicate with you. The first is, we need to discover what God has prepared for us. And secondly, we need to discover how God has prepared us for that which God has prepared for us. So now we're going to go into the inner chamber. Why do we want to go into the inner chamber? Because my brother and my sister, we want to learn the language of prayer. And the language of prayer flows out of the teachings of Christ in prayer. And we're going to look at that in a moment. But here is the beauty. You say, what is it that God has prepared for us? We're now coming to this inner chamber, this place. And people, students often say, so are you talking about the physical presence? I say, no, I'm talking about the lifestyle. Oh, they say, well, do you have a physical presence? Oh, yeah, I see. And they say, so how does it work with you? I say, well, I'm a morning person. My wife, Jane, she's not a morning person. I wake her up at 6.30 in the morning. I mean, she's a typical calm, cool, calculating Canadian, just like you guys. She said, if I wake up at 6.30 in the morning, I say, my darling, listen, wake up, come and see this sun is rising with me. You know what my Canadian wife said to me? She would say, Papa, if God wants to see the sun rising at 6.30 in the morning, he's scheduled it much later than that. And you know, after 25 years of marriage, one morning, I've never done this, you say, oh, you're awful. But I get up early in the morning and say, after 25 years of marriage, one morning I made her a cup of tea and I took it up to her room. Never done it before. You say, oh, what a sinner you are. Yeah, true. And I took it up to her and I said, Janice, I said, I brought you a cup of tea here early in the morning. And she looked at it and she said, are you poisoning me? But listen here, this inner chamber, how do I cultivate this? How do I develop this in my relationship with God? Let's discover what God has prepared for us and let's discover how God has prepared us for what he has prepared for us. And brother and sister, what Oswald Chambers said, is when we put ourselves in that position, the language of prayer is just going to flow. What is it that God has prepared for us? The holiest. He said, have you got this thing together? No. Listen here, there are times when I get on my knees before God and you know what I say to God? I say, God, I feel like an old dry stick this morning. I don't feel like praying. Brother and sister, there's none of us who can sit here this morning and I'm scared to death because I sometimes meet people and they come and they speak to us about prayer and you know when they speak to us about prayer, you sit there and you listen and you think, they know everything about this thing. Man, I tell you, I stagger when I hear that. You never get to the place where you know how to do it. And I tell you, there are mornings, a couple of weeks ago we were out at a weekend conference and I was speaking at a church in the United States and Janice was with me and man, I just poured my soul into that church all weekend. And Monday morning was my birthday, I was 63 years old and I woke up on Monday morning just absolutely wiped and Janice woke me up and she said, hey daddy, happy birthday. And my head was just pounding with a headache and she said, you're 63, how do you feel? I said, I tell you how I feel. She said, how? I said, I just want to drive a bus in Newfoundland. That's what I want to do. I mean, you know, brother and sister, don't you ever think we have this thing together, you know? I've got this strength in the years to write this incredible book on the prayer life of Christ. I refuse in my life to ever write a book on prayer. You say, how can you do that? And people say, why would you write a book on prayer? I said, no, I want to be the book, I want to be fresh. And he wrote this incredible book on prayer. One day he phoned me and he said, I need counseling Gerard, I need counseling. He was somewhere out there in the U.S. and for three hours I sat on the phone trying to help this friend, you know, he was an evangelist and an excellent, excellent fellow. And for three hours, and then at the end of the three hours I just listened and listened and listened. You know, a question well asked is a question sometimes well answered. I listened and listened and after three hours he said, do you have a suggestion? I said, I think I do. And he said, what did he say? I said, I'll tell you what to do. I said, I want you to grab a blanket and a canister of water and I want you to grab a pillow that you could kneel on and I want you to take your Bible, the Old and New Testament, and I want you to take a notebook and I want you to go and spend a week in prayer and fasting. Oh, he said, okay. I said, will you do that? Yeah, I said, I think I can do that. I said, now when you do that, I said, I want to ask you one more thing. He said, what is it Gerard? I said, I want you to take one more book with you. He said, which is the book that you think I should take? I said, it's the book that you wrote on prayer. And he would talk to me for three years. He said, why do you do this to me? I said, because I know you and your heart has never been broken before God. Oh, brother and sister, it's easy to stand up here and say all these things. You can do it better than me. But the heart of the issue is we need to get on our knees and do it. And prayer is not a weapon necessary. Prayer is a battlefield. Can I be absolutely transparent with you this morning? It's a lonely battle. You remember the prophet in the Old Testament when 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 hunt. I don't know about the North American eagles, but I can tell you something about the great African eagle. Most of the times they are on their own. When the great African fish eagle becomes old and he realizes he's not as effective as he was then, he would scratch his beak against the cliffs so that they would be sharp. He would bash his wings against those cliffs so that the old feathers would come out. He would scratch his claws because he doesn't want to lose touch. Can I ask you a question this morning? We love to see people the way God sees us. I don't know this city of St. John's. I don't know what's going on in this city. I love to ask questions. I remember taking a mountain on first day night and going back next week to be at the church. And as I was coming into the city and I drove through these areas and these houses, my heart just broke. People, you know, the underweights we have in the basket. Probably many of them live from day to day. Some of them are immersed in drugs. God is not going to break your heart or my heart. It's got this sacred place, you know. You know, Satan has come to me and said, you know what, you're going to become so heavenly minded that you'll be of no earthly use. And I just stood up and said, I don't think so. The more I'm going to be in touch with God, the more I will become sensitive to the needs of people. Amen. Amen. Sacred. Are you afraid of the holiness of God? Ah, you remember that prophet Isaiah and the Old Testament. You remember what happened to him when he said in Isaiah chapter 6, he said, the year when King Uzziah died. Why did he say that? Because he was the chaplain to the king, you know. That's what happened. And he said, the year when King Uzziah died, he said, I also saw the Lord. So the king died. He was chaplain to the king. And the carpet was ripped out from underneath him. And he said, I also saw the Lord. And then he made this statement and he said, and he was high and lifted up. And I love this word in the Old Translation. It's a great Hebrew word. It speaks of the beauty of the garments of the reality. But the Old Translation said, and his trains filled the temple. And then he said, there were those seraphims. And he said, he said, when I saw the Lord and those seraphims were there, and they were crying out this incredible, amazing word. He said, what was the word? It was the Hebrew word, which is the word holy. And they were crying out, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. You know, last night when we were dealing with these young people and the place where I was standing, I was confronted with a group of incredible young people. And it was so difficult to speak to them because I thought that these young people are pure and set apart unto God and sanctified and purified and full to the fullness of the life of Christ. What amazing instruments they can become. And I could hardly speak to them. It was so tough, you know. And so the prophet said, I saw these seraphims and I heard them crying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. And then he made this staggering statement. He said, woe to me, I'm a man of unclean lips. I'm dwelling amongst a people of unclean lips. Isn't it fascinating brother and sister, five times in the first five chapters he cried out, woe to the people, woe to the people. You see, if you see someone else with the grace of God and you see yourself without the grace of God, you never will be able to criticize, you know. And you'll never be able to deal with your slandering. And you can't say it in his face. And sometimes we're guilty of flattering. You say, what is flattering? Flattering is when you say something in someone's face and you can't say it to their face. And Robert Marie McChane, the great Puritan, used to say, how can the Holy Spirit in you criticize the Holy Spirit in me, you know. And he said, woe to me, I'm a man of unclean lips. Prophet, I'm a man of unclean lips and I'm living amongst a people of unclean lips. You see, the pollution of the world is coming, it's like the layers of an onion, you know. And they just try to stick on us, you know. And try to distract us from the supremacy of the life of Christ. And then suddenly he stopped and he said, and one of those seraphim came. And what did the seraphim do? The seraphim took a call from the altar and he said, as the seraphim took the call from the altar, he came and he touched my lips. And then the prophet stopped. Now listen to this. The prophet stopped and suddenly he said, also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? You know what Oswald Chambers did? I love this. Oswald Chambers, and I think he got it from Charles Henning Spurgeon, but Oswald Chambers made this statement. He said, this statement of, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Chambers said, this voice was there through the centuries, through the years, through the months, through the weeks, through the hours.