New Zealand Interview - Part 3

New Zealand's Rima. It is indeed, and a few riveting stories here coming from Farrah. Lovely, lovely indeed, Farrah, just because, you know, why it's so nice to hear things like this? Because, you know, you read in the Bible, and you read these amazing things like the Red Sea Parting or whatever, but you know, God is still doing these big things today, you know? Absolutely.

It's not something that happened years ago. And I mean, that's part of what you do, you're bringing that reality of God to people's lives today, you know? Absolutely. You know, a couple of things about prayer.

First of all, because, you know, when you speak about prayer, one thing that people need to know, because we've had such a misunderstanding about it, and I mean, I've been exploring Hebrew, Old Testament, Greek New Testament for the last probably 30 years to really come to grips with what is God's perspective of prayer? How does He see prayer? One of the things that I've learned is that you never really get to the place where you know how to pray. And these black men that taught me these principles of prayer, they would say to me, because, you know, in North America where I live, and where we are involved in seminaries and colleges and these kind of things, we have this understanding that it's the time that you spend with God. We would say there's 96 slots in every 24 hours or 15 minutes each, and we are so time-orientated.

You're right. These men would say to me, it's not the times that you spend with God, but they would say it's the times that God spent with you. And they would have an understanding, in fact, they would say to me, listen, God doesn't answer necessary prayer because you are praying.

They would say it's not you bringing all your things to God. It's God bringing Himself to you and you discovering His will as it relates to prayer. And as you pray according to His will, the answer is always this.

Because they would say to me, if you study the life of Christ in prayer, I've been memorizing the New Testament, and in the New Testament you've got 7,957 verses, 24 words in the Greek text that is speaking about prayer that takes you to 248 possible prayer passages that divides themselves up into 12 aspects of New Testament prayer. Okay. I mean, this is unique, and you need 80 hours to explore the reality of what this is.

But when you study the life of Christ as it relates to prayer, and you know in the Hebrew Old Testament there are 11 words that are speaking about prayer, and the prophets in the Old Testament were so taken up by the fact that when Christ came that He was going to be a man of prayer, that three times in the Old Testament they used a Hebrew word prophesying about the Messiah, and they called Him a prayer. So Jesus came, and He became the manifestation of prayer in the Old Testament. So when He prayed in John 17, and He said, Father, I've manifested Your name.

You discover in the ministry of Christ in the four Gospels how He manifested in the 16 Hebrew names of God and the Old Testament. Now when Christ spoke about prayer, He never spoke about prayer not being answered. He was the only one that was able to say at the grave of Lazarus, Father, I thank You that You always listen to me, because prayer to Christ was the unfolding and the discovering of the will of His Father.

Now these black men would say to me, You cannot separate the answer of prayer from what God is doing in your own life, because they would say God cannot entrust you with the answers unless you have fulfilled His plan and His purposes in your own life. And they would take me to passages like Romans 8, when you discover the ministry of the Holy Spirit in prayer, when Paul said the Spirit Himself, in the Greek language, He's dealing with the Holy Spirit as a person here. The Spirit Himself helped my weaknesses and my infirmities, and in order to understand that in Romans 8, 26, you need to go to the first 25 verses and discover the weaknesses and infirmities in my life as a believer.

And He said the Spirit helped those weaknesses and infirmities. So what does the Holy Spirit do? He intercedes for me. And the word intercession is a combination of two words in Latin, intra, sidra, great application upon my life.

And what is happening? He intercedes for me with groanings. And it's a wonderful word, it's the word stanachmos in the Greek language. And so He intercedes, and He intercedes for me according to the will of God, and He serves my mind and He serves my heart.

So these men would be very strong in the understanding that there's no power without purity, that you won't put a dynamite stick in the hand of a young child because it's too dangerous. God will not entrust to me the greatness of understanding prayer unless I am rightly related to God. And they would say to me, and I love it, they would say to me, you can't walk with God in the basis of what you are doing for God.

You know, in North America where I live, and some other countries, we think, what I'm doing for God justifies who I am. They would say, no. They would say, God is more concerned with a worker than with a work.

They would say to me, you can't take people further spiritually than you are yourself. You can only impart to people what you possess. They would say, you need to live a Christian life that demands a supernatural explanation.

And they would imply to me, I mean, they would burn into the inadequacy of my relationship with God and say to me, ministry is the consequences of walking with God in intimacy. So when that happened, they would install into my life the understanding that prayer is initiated by God, that long before I have any passion to pray, just like He came to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, God would come to them. What did He do? He came to them, and the voice of God came to them.

He came in the cool of the evening, which is the Hebrew word ruach, which is the word for spirit, which relates to the word that came out of the life of Moses when he spent 40 days and 40 nights in the presence of God and they had to put a veil in front of his face. And that Hebrew word for the glory of God is the word raiach. And they would come to this thing that God is looking for people through whose lives He can flow unhinderedly with a sense of brokenness, transparency, unction, vulnerability, a spirit of prayer, and a sense of saying, I'm after God.

So my passion, because you know sometimes we're in large churches, 6,000, 8,000, 10,000 people, and sometimes I'm with smaller groups. My passion is not to see churches full of people, but to see churches that will be full of people, that will be full of God. And, Laurel, that costs absolutely everything in the lives of the people.

Because the problem is, if we don't live this kind of committed life, we are producing people who are just like us. And if we are not passionate about this thing called the Christian life, the people that we lead to Christ are going to be the same. And so that's kind of just, that's my philosophy of what this is all about.

Now obviously, Sharad, you're here with a purpose. You've got some meetings lined up, and we'll talk about that and where people can find you. And also I'd like to talk about revival as well.

So we'll just take a quick break, and then we'll talk about that coming up shortly.