This sermon emphasizes the importance of intimacy with God through prayer, highlighting the speaker's personal journey of learning English to understand the Bible, the significance of writing out scriptures, and the essence of prayer as a means to commune with God. It delves into the life of George Mueller and his deep prayer life, the concept of true surrender to God, and the necessity of aligning our prayers with God's will. The sermon also touches on the life of Jesus and the depth of his prayer life, urging listeners to seek intimacy with God above all else.

To be with you here this morning. If you think I have an accent, I don't have an accent. So, you know, I don't know if you're conscious of this, but if you come to a country before you're 17 years old, they say that you lose your accent. And if you come after 17 years old, you don't lose your accent. And I was just, one of the things I love to do in my own disciplines, as it relates to intimacy with God, is I listen to the scriptures. In fact, if you really want to know, because I'm glad Janice is not here, and I'll tell you why, because I had to learn English. I was brought up in a village in South Africa where my people said, the Dutch came in 1652, and I have the privilege of lecturing in the Netherlands every two years, and when I'm amongst the Dutch, I say to them, they wear wooden shoes, and they've got wooden heads, and they wouldn't listen. But the Dutch came in 62, and then the German settlers came to South Africa when I was born and brought up. Now, then the French, the Higgadots came in 1763, 276 of them, and then the German settlers came, and then in 1820, the British settlers came, and my people say, that's when the trouble started. So, because of that, I was brought up in a village close to Mozambique, or a town where we didn't want to speak English, and so when I became a Christian, and God began to speak to me about Scotland and the British Isles, I had to learn the language, and an old pastor gave me an old translation of the Bible. And, you know, I was saved in a theological school at the end of my first year in South Africa, and he gave me this old translation of the Bible, and I said to him, so what translation is this? Oh, he said, it's the old King James version of the Bible, if it was good enough for Paul, it should be good enough for you. Oh, dear me. But you know what I did, brother and sister, I spent the first seven years listening, I got the Old and New Testament, in those days, of course we had no CDs. Anyone who's late, $50 is a problem. You just made it up? You're out. You know, 40 years ago, we didn't have CDs and all this technology today that you're dealing with, and so what I did those days, I got myself the Old and the New Testament cassette, and I made a commitment of the first 90 minutes of every day to listen through the Old Testament on audio. And the last 45 minutes of every night, I listened to the New Testament. I think in those seven years, I was able to systematically go through the Old Testament in English about 49 times, and I think the New Testament about 87 times, and I shared this with the young people last night, and then I began to write out the scriptures. You ever done that? Oh, I tell you, do you know that the king in the Old Testament had to write out the law and the prophets, the law, not sure if the prophets were the right things, I think it was the law, he had to write out the whole law by hand. So you say, are you the king? No, I am the child of the king. Great. And this is, I began to do that 40 years ago. I said to the young people last night, if you take the 7,957 verses in the New Testament, if you take 13 verses every day, every 13 months or so, you've written out the whole of the New Testament by hand. And it's just an incredible encouragement, the same with the Old Testament. You see, if you don't know who God is, you'll never be able to figure out what God is able to do. If you don't know what God has said, you never will be able to figure out how God has been able to work in the lives of people. And brother and sister, let me just be absolutely transparent with you this morning, a friend of mine said some time ago, I always love to say to people, I want to be absolutely honest with you. And he turned to me and he said, he's a pastor. He said, you shouldn't say that. So I said, oh, dear me, what did I say wrong? He said, if you say, I want to be absolutely honest with you, it means that you haven't been honest up to this point. And I'm just one of these typical rich Canadians. And so I said, I'm so sorry. I said, you know my heart. I said, so what do you think I should say? He said, you should say, I want to be absolutely transparent with you. So I said, oh, so that means I haven't been transparent up to this point. My heart is dead out. But let me just tell you something, brother and sister, and we're going to look at this this morning. You know, we don't have time. I wish we had a week of lectures or sessions on learning the language of prayer, because it's so deep. And we know so much about the scriptures, but the scriptures know so little about us. I mean, it's just a tragic thing. And if we want to learn the language of prayer, what needs to happen is that that which God is saying about prayer needs to become part of our lives. Because, you see, we can't take people further spiritually than we are ourselves. We can only impart to people that which we possess. And I said to the young people last night, you know, there was a reason why Jesus said, as my father has sent me, so send I you. Because he has no other hands than our hands, and no other lips than our lips. And you know, God doesn't need us. He can do his work far better without us. If you ever think you're indispensable, you're going to be in deep trouble very soon. Do you remember Elijah in the Old Testament, when after the incredible reality of what happened in Mount Carmel, and Elijah had to fled for his life, things didn't work out the way that he thought it would, and he missed it, you know. And he found himself sitting on a juniper tree, and God came to him and said, so what's going on with you, Elijah? Do you remember Elijah said, I'm the only one left. Do you know what the Hebrew language said? I love the Hebrew language. The Hebrew language said, God said to him, so what? That's exactly what it means. And then God said, there's seven of us, and you know, the Lord don't need us. Brother and sister, I'm amazed that God allowed us to do what we do. And Oswald Chambers said, if you know what God is going to do, he's not going to do it. But we can put ourselves in a position where we are at God's disposal, that when the wind and the spirit of God will come, we can find ourselves going into the depths of the ocean, so we shall have. And here's the issue, and we're going to explore prayer this morning as it relates to intimacy with God, and those things, how to separate the answer of prayer from that which God is going to do in your own life. And the essence of prayer, if I may say this to you just at the outset, brother and sister, the essence of prayer is not to receive thousands of things from God, which is possible. I mean, George Mueller of Bristol, the great man of prayer, with 85,000 answers to prayer, two books written about his prayer life, the first one of the title 35,000 Answers to Prayer in 24 Hours, can you imagine that? Now we look at the title 50,000 Answers to Prayer that took him longer than 24 hours to see God answering those prayers. You know how long it is that he prayed for someone? 63 years. You know when that person became a Christian? Three weeks after George Mueller died. So when I asked George Mueller one day, what is it about your life? And he rose to his feet. He was an amazing man. And he rose to his feet. He said there was a moment when George Mueller died. He said I died to my own ambitions. I died to my own desires. I died to my own reputation. He said there was a day when God came and put the sentence of death upon the self-life. And so they said, so how does it work with you as it relates to intimacy with God? And he said, I live in the inner chamber. My life is a life of communion and fellowship with God. He said I fall asleep praying. He said I wake up praying. He said my life, when someone asks you this story, Mr. Mueller how many hours do you spend in prayer and you refuse to answer it. And he said the only thing I can tell you is that I seldom go through an hour without praying. And he wrote in the New Testament and said pray without ceasing. And people come to me because we've been doing this stuff in more than 30 countries taking pastors and leaders to prayer summits and spend four days with them in prayer. And in some places the overwhelming interest that's so unbelievable that we've sacrificed for 6,000 pastors in some countries who want to learn the language of prayer and started a Monday afternoon with them and all day Tuesday and Wednesday is a day of prayer and fasting and then we finish on Thursday and they're always excited about Wednesday when they say oh, Gerard's going to teach us about prayer and fasting and then after the conference the prayer summit is over because you know if you can't get through to God how are you going to get through to people? That's why someone once said he that often speaks to God about people will often speak to people about God. So when we get to the end they say okay so why did you take us to a day of prayer on Wednesday and what we were doing? And you know what I say to them? Because they say oh you took us to a day of prayer and fasting there was no food on Wednesday. And I say so why did you do that? And they say well it's a biblical truth about it. You have money to give your food you know. But listen this is so important brother and sister here's the essence the essence of prayer it's not for us to get a whole bunch of things from God. True as that may be the essence of prayer is to get it from God. That's the essence. That's why Jesus was able to say Father I thank you that you always listen to me. Imagine that. Can you imagine having intimacy in the presence of God when he was able to say I thank you that you always listen to me. Let me give you one of the greatest statements in the prayer life of Christ that came from his lips. You say where is it? It's in the Gospel of John. He prayed and John 17 and he said Father the hour has come glorify the Son so that the Son also may glorify you. And then it almost seems that there's a pause within the context of the construction of the Greek language when he made that statement and he said glorify the Son so that the Son may also glorify you. And then it just seems in the depth of the dearth here of the Son of God it almost stood back and then he made the statement and he said Father he said glorify me with the glory which I had while I was with you. There's no deeper than that that you can go. And that's what we're going to explore which is the great privilege for you for us to do. And our time is very limited. Monday morning if you are free on Monday morning what time do you leave? 9 o'clock. 9 o'clock on Monday morning if you are free we're coming together in this room and I want to take some of these old testament concepts as it relates to prayer. You know there are 11 Hebrew words in the old testament that speaks about prayer and I'm not going to touch you with all those concepts but there are 11 Hebrew words that speaks about prayer. I call them the 11 amazons of old testament scripture as it relates to intimacy with God. But I would insist that out of those 11 amazing words flows a multitude of other words that is coming to the surface that speaks about prayer and they are not the 11 words but they flow out of those words as it relates to prayer. And when you study those words let me give an example. Abram I've just been going through Genesis in my quiet times writing out Genesis and every time when every time when God spoke in Genesis I wrote the words out in red. You know God spoke 99 times in Genesis. You want to understand the Old Testament prayer so what is it? God spoke man responded and in between those two there's a thing called intimacy with God. And Abram God spoke to him 56 times out of the book of Genesis. Fascinating. And here's another word it's not one of the 12 but it flows out of those rivers little creeks and streams flowing out of those creeks about Jesus that was going to come. Three times they used one of those Hebrew words for prayer, and as they prophesied about Jesus coming, you know what they did? They called him, in the Hebrew language, a prayer. And so when the Spirit of God came upon Christ, in his baptism in the Gospel of Luke and Matthew and John, the Bible says in Luke's Gospel that he was praying, and his whole life became a life of intimacy with God. And would you allow me to say to you something this morning? We don't have a clue about the prayer life of Jesus. Do you know the three and a half years when he ministered on this planet? Everything that we find in the four Gospels, brother and sister, can probably be done in about a period of eight weeks. Everything that he said, spoke 47 times in public, 24 times he was preaching, because preaching challenges the world, 23 times he was teaching, teaching informs the mind. You see, we are born with a character, with a personality, but God is born in a Christian character. And everything that Jesus said, and probably did, from the four Gospels, would probably have been done in a period of eight weeks. How long was he here? Three and a half years. So what happened in between all those other times? It's a life of intimacy with God. One of my heroes, we give ten of his books to pastors all over the world. It's a manual in the name of Dr. Daniel Murray. I wish I could give you those ten books. He wrote 48 books. Absolute surrender. What does it mean to be totally abandoned to God? What does it mean for the Spirit of God not just to be resident in our lives, but to become present? Soul doubt. What does it mean when my life and its relationships has become at God's disposal? What does it mean when my mind and its thoughts have saturated with the exalted life of Christ? What does it mean when my body and its instincts become this incredible temple of the Holy Spirit? What does it mean when Robert Murray McChang, the old Puritan, said, how can the Holy Spirit in you criticize the Holy Spirit in me? What does it mean when McChang of Scotland said, so much of my time of praying is preparing myself how to pray. What does it mean when Thomas Watts of the old Puritan said, I just don't want to be informed by scripture, but I want to be inflamed by the death of it. And here's the manifestation of his life. And he hardly, if I may say this to you this morning, Christ hardly spoke about prayer that wasn't answered. You say, how can you say that? Because prayer was the fulfilling of his understanding of the will of the Father. You see, if you're praying the will of God, the answer is always yes. Maybe not the way you're going to want it. Maybe not today. And sometimes the answer is delayed. And the reason when the answer is delayed, brother and sister, what is happening is that there are things that God needs to teach us so that he can prepare us for the answer. Tomorrow morning in Sunday school classes, we're going to look at this thing of Elijah, you know, in the Old Testament, when James said in James chapter 5, the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much. And then look at the life of Elijah. And how God spoke to him and said, go and stand before the king and say to the king that it's not going to be rain except on my word. And so he went and he stood in front of the king and people would say, wow, isn't this amazing? God spoke to the prophet Elijah. Ah, brother and sister, listen here. For three months, three years and six months, there was no rain. Do you think God said to Elijah, Elijah, we're heading for Mount Carmel in three years and six months. Elijah, why don't you take a long vacation and in about three years and five months I called you back to come here. No, brother and sister, for three years and six months he was in the school of prayer. And we are so terrible, you know, we try to take these shortcuts. God said he doesn't work like that. And it's amazing, you know, this whole concept. I want us to spend some time in prayer and I want us to get into the scriptures as it relates to what we are going to deal with here. I've got a clock, isn't this great? You say, is that all that you have? No, I don't. But this is going to help us. So what we are going to do, we're going to spend some time in prayer. If you need to go to the washroom, then go do your time in prayer because then we're just going to get into these passages and this systematic work we're going through. But let's spend some time in prayer and this is what I would like you to do. Can we break up in groups of four? We've got chairs here and this is what I would like you to do. And we're doing it tomorrow night at our prayer summit here in the church. Break up in groups of four in different places. You can grab your chair and walk. You don't have to grab your bed and walk. And the guy said, grab your chair and go into a different corner and then we're going to spend some time in prayer. You know, Janice and myself, Janice is not here because our daughter is getting married on June 16th and I'm bankrupt by the way. We only have one. Hallelujah. So Janice is with me. But when we just got married, Janice and myself, this is what we did. We would break people up in groups of four and sometimes we would stand and we would hold hands and we would pray together. And we were just married and so she was always on my right hand and so we'd be in these groups. And every time when we come to the end of a segment of prayer and she's here and I would give her three squeezes to tell her that I really love her. And one night we were doing this in a place and Janice was on my right and there was this elderly man, probably in his late 80s, standing next to me. In theological terms, I would be allowed to say he was ready to push up daisies, but it's not as bad as that. And he was standing on my left and so we prayed together and when we got to the end, I wanted to give my wife these three squeezes and I messed it up. And I gave the old guy three squeezes. He said, how did you know he was old? I heard the bones. And when he was all done, he was okay, he looked at me and he said, so young man, what was those three squeezes about? And I didn't fall back into my deformed theology and I said, well, maybe it was the father, the son and the holy spirit. Anyway, got away with it and so I don't want you to do that now, but we're going to spend some time in prayer. So find three other people and this is what I want you to do. Let me give you some insight. I want you to turn to those people and I want you to ask them, is there anything that I can pray for you about? And we're going to share not long extended explanation that needs, just take a minute or so and say, you know, if you pray for me this morning, this is the way that I want you to pray. And we'll spend some time in prayer and then I will close it and we jump right into the material and first session. So can we do that?