Prayer Summit - Discovery Baptist Church - Session 3

I just would like to say this morning it's a real privilege to be able to be with you, my wife and myself. We live across the border in... You have 51 states, don't you? Oh, you have Canada, you know? And we're just as divided as you these days, so it's the United States of Canada and US, I guess. Anyway, it's wonderful for us to be allowed with you, you know, Chris and his family.

We met more than probably 20 years ago and I felt that time, you know, you meet or you get to know people and you get a sense of something. You can't define it, you can't explain it, but you just know. And I, 20 years ago, when we first got to know one another to a degree, I always felt in my heart that God had a special plan for a pastor's life.

You know, and so then, when I got in touch with him some time ago and he said it's been 20 years, that's not my fault, it's his fault that it's 20 years. So, anyway, I felt like that through the years to the degree that I thought, well, if God is going to call him, he's going to need the call of God upon his life and he's going to need a wife. And so that's what happened.

And he has got his father now and his father-in-law, I mean, he's surrounded by people. He should be okay, really, you know. But, and then last night we were with him, it was such a privilege.

And we met these five children and Ruf and his wife and the rest of the family. And what a privilege it was. And I thought, well, if it's going to take five years for me to be invited to come back here, I guess in five years' time it's going to be ten children.

I mean, you know. But you know the blessing of last night? These five kids, they're going to be like the pipes of an organ, by the way. Anyway, the little one there, I think it's Gracie, if I'm not mistaken, she stood there and looked at me and I just, I love children, stretched out my hand and she came and gave me a hug.

And oh man, I felt so important, you know. I felt more important than Donald Trump, to be honest with you, you know. So, and just when we left again, she came and gave me another hug.

We're taking her to Canada, they just don't know it. Anyway, thanks so much for allowing us. This day to me, you know, I was born and brought up in South Africa and an African woman some time ago in Canada, she said when I was, she said, where were you born? And I said, in Africa.

And she said, why are you not black? I said, my father ran out of paint, you know. I mean, what else do you say to these Africans? But, my brother and sister, when we look at the day like today, I don't see this as a morning service and a this and a that. For us in Africa, this is an event.

And Chris just made a terrible mistake. He said, this is a prayer summit. Well, he doesn't know a prayer summit lasts a week.

So, if you're not back here tomorrow night, we're going to be back here. No, we won't do that. But, thank you for allowing us and what we started in the first service and then flow into the adult Sunday school class as it relates to this concept of developing intimacy with God and this evening.

Now, I've been, because we've been at this thing for almost 50 years and God has allowed Janice and myself to teach and to preach and to deal with leadership and missionaries in probably around 40 countries. And one of the things that I've done through the years is to collect material. You know, 75% of our growth as Christians will be determined by what we read and expose ourselves to.

So, it means God don't bypass the mind. God is not going to come and take you and myself in the back of our necks and throw us into an experience with Him. We need to be exposed to the communication of the truth of the Word of God.

When the Apostle Peter said, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he began to speak about Christian growth, he gave us the dynamics of Christian growth and he gave us the direction. He didn't say grow into grace. He said grow in grace.

And the direction is that it's a downward growth in our capacity to receive the fullness of God. It's an upward growth in our capacity to perceive the fullness of God. And that becomes an outgrowth in our capacity to release the fullness of God.

But when we speak about growth, and he said grow in grace, the dynamics of this, that we need to expose ourselves to the communication of the truth of the Word of God. My brethren and sisters, we can't grow spiritually without the Word of God. And when we expose ourselves to the communication of the Word of God, you say what are the consequences of that? The Spirit of God comes and He fertilized the seed of God's Word.

And the consequences of the communication, the fertilization, becomes the manifestation of the life of the Word of God. And so what we have done, because I've collected books on prayer for probably 40 years, I went through my library because whenever I'm in a place where I find quality books on prayer, you know that come to the reality that we can't go from experience to truth. We can't do that.

Because the enemy, if he can't keep us back, he's pushed us over the edge. So we need to go from truth to experience. And through the years, I've collected books.

When I find excellent literature, I ask my office to help us to buy as many of those books. And I'm afraid to tell you that most of those books are 20, 30, 40 years. And some of them are 200 years old.

Because it's a level of depth that is great. And we have brought with us, it could have been 140, 150 books with us. Boxes there.

You say, why did you do this? Because I'm concerned about this church. We don't want a church full of people. We want a church that will be full of people that will be full of God.

And my brother and my sister, it takes 3 to 5 to 7 to 9 to 11 to 13 years to see what is considered as the average evangelical church in North America to become a house of prayer. Where there is an underlining seeking after God. We teach in Bible colleges and seminaries and those kind of... And I always say to my students, if there is no hunger, there's probably, if there is no thirst, and hunger, there's probably no life.

Because we can't take people further spiritually than we are ourselves. I mean, when Jesus said, as my Father has sent me, so do I send you. He really meant it, you know.

He really meant it when he realized that he's got no other hands in our hands, no other feet in our feet, no other lips in our lips. And when he said to his disciples, it is to your advantage that I go away from you. Because, I mean, they didn't understand this.

He said to them, it's to your advantage that I go away from you. Because he said to them, when I go away from you, you will do greater things than these. I mean, can you imagine that? You say, why do you say that? Because he was limited.

And I hate to say this, you know, because it sounds so disrespectful, and I don't mean it. He was limited within the reality of his humanity. But he said, the Holy Spirit is going to come.

And when the Holy Spirit came, he said, when my Spirit come, my Spirit will convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Of sin, because they do not believe in me. You know why most people are not willing to trust God? It's because they don't believe God can change them.

And he said, my Spirit will convict the world of sin, righteousness, because I go to my Father, of judgment, because the Prince of this world is judged. Now, it's possible this Sunday morning, there are some of us who sit here in the service, and you've never, never been born of the Spirit of God. You've gone through the waters of baptism, didn't do a thing to your intimacy with God.

It's possible that you sit here, and you say, if I'm honest with myself, I don't really know Christ. I need to tell you that the same sun that is softening the butter is the sun that hardens the clay. And there is a time we know not when and a place we know not where.

And it seals the destiny of men. And if you're lost here this morning and you don't know Christ, you don't know if God is ever going to speak to you again. So what does it mean? It means you need to be saved.

You say, Gerard, what is it going to cost me? It's going to cost you absolutely everything. But it's going to cost you more to miss the will of God than it's going to cost you to find it. And God said today is the day of salvation.

If you hear my voice, and I don't know this morning, I mean, we were in a Bible college in Germany a couple of years ago, 106 students, and I go to these theological schools and take the students for a week of prayer. And the Monday morning you get up amongst them and I look them in the eyes and many of them go to Bible colleges because their parents have sent them, because the parents want the Bible colleges to do what they didn't do themselves. You know, the disaster of the family these days.

Listen, God has not given us children to populate hell. We sat in the school, 106 students, a week of prayer, and I said to them the Monday morning, and looked them in the eyes, and I said to them, listen, Janice and myself is not here because we have nothing else to do. I mean, we can be in many places, you know.

And I said to them, the only reason why we are here is because we want to meet with God. And we started Monday morning and began to teach them in prayer. And for virtually every hour that I spoke in teaching and prayer, I spent about an hour with them in prayer.

And I told them Monday morning, I'm preparing you, because Friday we're going to do something that you've never done in your life. And I could see the wheels turning. You know, these young people, they think they know everything.

Thank God, it doesn't take long for them to figure out they don't know a thing. Now remember, adults is only grown up young people. Listen here.

And I prepared them all week. I said, Friday is a day of prayer and fasting. And you know, I thought, wow.

And you know, that Friday came and we came together. And you know, probably about 3 o'clock that Friday morning, you know, God, don't tell us what He's going to do, you know. In fact, if we know what God is going to do, He's probably not going to do it.

3 o'clock that morning, God began to whisper into my heart and said, I'm coming to church today. Oh, it scared the life out of me. And that Friday morning, we started with these 106 students.

And the faculty and all of them is in there. And I shared with them about revival. Oh, brethren and sisters, 20 minutes of an outpouring of the Spirit of God in this Discovery Baptist Church will do more for us than 20 years of our own stuff.

It's like what Jonathan Edwards said. Revival is the community ablaze for God. He touched a man in the street.

And we start that Friday morning and the Spirit of God came. Oh! It's an amazing thing when the Spirit of God came. We've been in a movement like that in Peru with 6,000 pastors.

And on a Wednesday morning, the same thing happened. And when the Spirit of God broke through in the revival that morning, for five hours, we couldn't do a thing. You say, why? Because the brokenness came upon that whole group.

We were weeping. We didn't fall on our backs. No, for goodness sake not.

We were on our faces before God. And those pastors went back to their churches in Peru. And planted 60 new churches in 12 months.

Because God came. Do you know that Friday morning amongst these Bible college students when the Spirit of God broke through? Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones referred to this. And I love this.

He said it was nothing else but an organized disorder. I love that. You know what happened? 37 of them discovered that they were never born again.

God say then, God can change your life, you know. It doesn't matter how bad it is. Tonight when we pray together, we're going to pray together this evening.

We've got all those books and I want you to be exposed. Just grab one book and then begin to read it and let it become part of your life. We know so much of the Scriptures, brother and sister, but the Scriptures know so little about us, you know.

And so, God saved 37 of them. I went to preach in a church, a Mennonite church. We've got people in Canada, they call them Mennonites, you know.

Have you ever heard of the Mennonites? They think they're destined for heaven, but most of them could be lost. Amazing people. And I was in this large Mennonite church in a place called Steinbach's, all Mennonites.

And I said to them, how does it work here? They said, it takes you five minutes to get to know someone and five minutes to figure out who you're related to. Interesting people, you know. But you know that morning in that church? We just came back from New Zealand and I said to my wife Janice, I think my time is opening up.

Speaking all over the world and she said, I said, I don't know if I can relate to these young people anymore. You know, you need to get on to their level. And young people love to be challenged.

They want you to look in their eyes and tell them this is going to cost everything. And you need to challenge them. And I went and preached in that church and at the end of that service, that two morning service, just about a thousand people.

And I went to pray with some people at the front and this young fellow came and sat next to me. Because we thought our time was over with the students. And he sat next to me and he said, Gerard de Toy and I said, do I know you? And he said, well, I want you to pray with me.

And I said, why do you want me to pray with you? Oh, he said, he said, you know, those 37 students that were saved in Boren Seehoff in Germany, he said, I was one of them. And my life has never been the same. I thought, wow.

And I prayed with him and grabbed my back and went to the back and I came through into the foyer and a young guy jumped up. Tall, skinny Mennonite fellow. I just about looked at him and said, you know, you're so skinny, you need to drink black coffee to make a shadow.

I mean, he's so skinny, he just about needed to jump around the shower to get wet, you know. And he jumped up and he said, Gerard de Toy, I said, do I know you? And he said, well, you should. And I said, what do you mean? Well, he said, I drove three or four hours to come to the service this morning to come and hear you.

Oh, what a mistake. I said, you know, if I drive so far to listen to myself, I wouldn't even do it. I said, why are you here? He said, it was in a week of prayer that God changed my life and I've never been the same.

You see, there are some of us here and you are in your 60s or your 70s or your 80s and you say, you know, I've run my race. No, you haven't. You probably haven't started yet.

And there are some of us here and you've got young families. And I mean, I'm speaking to you out of my heart. And my young friend who's a father of your children, listen, if your children is not going to see Jesus Christ in your life, where are they going to find him? And my sister, have you lost the spirit of motherhood? God has given us these children and he wants them to walk with God.

I remember as a young evangelist in Africa, I stayed with a family and I played with a little boy in the carpet and I turned to him and I said, is your daddy a Christian? Oh, I just brightened up. He said, oh yeah. I said, how do you know your daddy is a Christian? He said, my daddy plays with me in the carpet and my daddy prays with me in the carpet.

And I love it. And then the little girl was there and she came and I said, is your mommy a Christian? I mean, they could have thrown me out of the house, you know. These young evangelists, they're so stupid they don't have enough brain cells to give them a headache.

And I said, is your mommy a Christian? Oh, yeah, my mommy is a Christian. I said, so, how do you know that your mommy is a Christian? Ah, she said, my mommy. I know my mommy is a Christian because when she makes a mistake, she comes to me and she says, sorry.

I thought, boy, isn't that incredible. And you sit here as a young father. You know what's a burden in the dream of my heart? That every young father with children in this church this Sunday will become a man that meets with God, that gets up before his family wakes up in the morning, and that spends time with God.

How dare you go into this godless society in which we live day by day without knowing your heart that you've met with God. Can I ask you a question this morning? Do you pray with your wife? I just met with the pastor this last weekend. The girl that came to serve us, lovely Christian girl.

She's been in one of the Bible colleges where we've taught through the years. And I said, she said, oh, I'm getting married. And I said to her, well, tell me about it.

And then she said, so what do you think? I said, listen, it's better to stay single than to marry the wrong person. And I said, so, tell me about the fellow. And she said, she said, well, and I said, is he a Christian? Because you know, you know what's going on today.

I don't know if you know, there's 90% of young men today are caught up in pornography. That's what we find in theological schools. And 80% of young women.

And so I said, so tell me about this young man. She told me about him. And I said, is he praying with you? Oh.

She said, not really. I said, if he's not going to pray with you right now, he's not going to pray with you when you marry him. So what do we long for? We long for a church that will be full of people, that will be full of God.

And so tonight we're going to come together for prayer. And listen, these families, I want you to bring your children. I mean, these children are innocent, you know.

They're pure. Do you know that God has sent revivals through the history of the church because of children that pray together? I used to preach amongst the Amish people, you know. Ah, you see, now I know what's wrong with you.

No. Don't do that. And I will never forget when the Spirit of God broke through into that group of 800 people in Pennsylvania and the pastor of that group, he's got eight children.

I mean, they're just like... And the little boy of four years old, his name was Joshua, he came to me one night after the service, and he grabbed my pants like this. Just a neat little fellow. And he had tears streaming down his cheeks.

And I said to him, Joshua, what's going on with you? Oh, Uncle Gerard, he said, God broke my heart tonight. Four years old. I wish you could hear him singing, a mighty fortress is our God.

And I said, Joshua, you know, God needs to break our hearts for the things that breaks the heart of God. And I said, Joshua, I said, what are you saying? Oh, he said, when you preach, he said, God broke my heart. He said, God broke my heart.

And I said, so what happened? He wouldn't believe it. This is what he said to me. He said, God broke my heart and I wept in my pants.

I thought, wow, there's more than one way of doing it. You know? And so when we come together for prayer tonight, I'm so looking forward to it. Because I want to sit at the feet of these pastors, you know, these men.

They're such godly men and the deacons and the leadership that God has given to you. And I want you to bring your children. And you say, so what are you saying to the rest of us? I'm saying to you, if you don't come tonight, you'll be out of the will of God and on your own.

Oh, you say, I'll never come back. You better not do that. Listen, let's pray and then we turn to the Scriptures.

And then, I don't know, how much time do I have left? Half an hour? Fifteen minutes. Please. Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank You this morning. We thank You that this is a day of an event of what we consider to call a prayer summit to a degree. And yet we think of those incredible gatherings where the houses of God came together.

Where those early apostles said in the Acts of the Apostles that we will give ourselves to prayer and to the Word. And where their lives became saturated in the beauty of the presence of God. Father, we thank You for this church.

We thank You for what You are doing. We thank You that these are men and women who are hungry for You. I thank You for all these young people.

These young families. These men and their wives and their children. And the fact that they only come to this place because this is a place where their hearts have become saturated with a hunger and a thirst after the things of God.

And so we pray this morning that as we turn to the beauty of Scripture, speak to us again through Your Word. Minister to us so that Your Word can become part of every aspect of our lives. And so that when You said to us let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.

And when the Apostle Paul came and said all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and it's profitable for reproof and for instruction in righteousness. We submit ourselves when You said, heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Word shall abide forever. Help it to find a resting place in our relationships with You.

In Jesus' name. Amen. Turn with me if you will to the Acts of the Apostles.

And we're just going to read a couple of verses from the first chapter. Acts chapter 1. Let's read from verse number 1. The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day in which He was taken up after that He, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments unto the Apostles to whom He had chosen. To whom also will I show Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, been seen of them forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

And being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which saith He, You have heard of Me. For John truly baptized with water, but He shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel? And Jesus said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own power, but you shall receive power.

After that the Holy Spirit is come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto Me in Judea, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. You know, I'm sure that you are conscious of that, that when we begin to study the Acts of the Apostles, that we discover what we call the history of a church. It's actually His story.

In fact, the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament can also be referred to as the Acts of the Holy Spirit. Because, my brother and sister, what happened was simply this, that that which Jesus began to do during the three and a half years of His ministry when He died on the cross for us, the resurrection took place, the ascension took place, and He sat at the right hand of the throne of the Father. What is He doing this morning? Well, the writer to the Hebrews is saying to us, He's sitting at the right hand of the throne of God, and He's ever interceding for us.

The incredibleness of the high priest ministry of Christ. But He said to His disciples that My Spirit is going to come. And that which He started on earth when He ascended to be at the right hand of His Father, now He is continuing to work through the work and the ministry of God the Holy Spirit.

And you know, sometimes I hear people being critical of those early apostles and the disciples of the Lord Jesus that somehow could not comprehend now that He was in their presence. You know, their understanding of prayer must have been so absolutely amazing because they would go to Jesus to ask Him things, but now when He ascended to be at the right hand of His Father, and He becomes the great intercessor, they are to learn the reality that although He is not there, His Spirit was going to come, and His Spirit was going to be a reality in the relationships with God. And so Jesus now was sitting at the right hand of the Father, and He was ministering through the work and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

That's why the Acts of the Apostles is a book with such incredible dispensational value. Because if we didn't have the Acts of the Apostles, there would have been about 31 years of history that we wouldn't have an idea what was happening in the early church. And so when Luke gave us the Acts of the Apostles, and you know the Acts of the Apostles in the Gospel of Luke, if I may say that, there was a time in the history of the church where it was actually one volume with two parts in it.

And so when He gave us the Acts of the Apostles, that became the reality of what it is. Now what was it about? Well, it was the future of the church. Christ looked upon the early disciples, and He said to them, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

And the reason why He said that to them is that He wanted them to come to an understanding of who the Holy Spirit is and what the Holy Spirit does. Because my brother and sister, if that wouldn't have happened, things just wouldn't have taken place the way that they did. And in 31 years of history, those early apostles, they were able to reach the world.

Judea, Samaria, Acts chapter 8 to 13, first seven chapters in Jerusalem, then unto the uttermost parts of the world. Why did He go into Samaria? Why did the Holy Spirit, why did Jesus say to them, you will become witnesses to Samaria? Well, you know, because He went through Samaria, spoke to the woman at the well, she recognized that He was the Christ, she went to tell the people and said, come and see a man who told me everything I did. And they began to listen.

And then in Acts chapter 8, Philip went into Samaria. And you know the story how the Holy Spirit of God came. So what happened here? Jesus turned to them and He said to them, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

But He did say to them, it's going to take place in Jerusalem. And my brother and my sister, I need to ask you this morning, how is it going in the realm of our Jerusalem? That is our personal relationship with God. Is God speaking to us? Is His Word relevant in our relationship? Are we praying for souls? Is there a burden upon our heart when we explore these concepts of prayer in the last session? And even earlier on, I mentioned to you that what needs to happen is that God needs to give us a vision.

I mean, the Bible says without a vision, my people will perish. And I always say to my daughter, I said, you know, if we don't have a vision for the future, what's happening we are living in the present and we are... nothing is happening in the present and we are living in the past. And so here came Jesus and He said to them, Jerusalem, the most difficult place.

And I want to ask you this morning, because what we did at the end of the adult Sunday school class, we kind of draw a circle around ourselves and I did that. I don't know about the rest. And I just said, God, can you come to this circle again? Because if it doesn't happen in this circle, it's not going to happen anywhere else.

Because we can only impart to people that which we possess. So you say, what happened? Well, He said, you will become witnesses. And then He explained to us what this means.

And I love this. He said, you will become witnesses. So now we focus on their individual lives.

And you see, when we begin to speak about the Holy Spirit, and we speak about ourselves, and He said, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit will come. Now this is a personal reality and an experience with God. And He said, you shall receive.

And then He explained this and I love this. He said, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit will come upon you. You know, we are living in a society in 2024, where the world is drunk of a desire for power.

Where you see dictatorships. Where you see countries. Where you see lives being destroyed because people are passionate because they want power.

Now, brethren and sisters, here's the reality. There's no power without purity when it comes to theology. And so when Jesus turned to those early disciples and He said to them, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

We need to ask ourselves, what was He trying to say to them? Because first of all, when they followed Him, they were so deeply affected by the realm of the authority that He was carrying because of course He was the Son of God. And the Holy Spirit came upon Him. He was anointed for service and wherever He went, God was doing something.

And now these disciples as they were following Him and looking at His life, they were telling me sometimes my students would say to me, oh, you know, it must have been amazing to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. To follow Him for a period of three and a half years and to sit at His feet and to listen to what He said. And I just listened to them.

And you know, if you want to know honest, I just staggered at the statement like that. Because I would look in their eyes and say, can you imagine? Can you imagine following someone who was sinless in His life, supernatural in His walk? Jesus of Nazareth. Can you imagine sitting at His feet and He knows everything about you? Can you imagine Him looking at Peter and say to him, the rooster is going to crow.

And He said, before it happens, you're going to deny Me three times that you ever know Me. And they said to the Apostle Peter and thought, what? I can't do, I will never do that. And then it happened.

Can you imagine the eyes of Christ when He was standing in front of Caiaphas and the rest and some of the disciples and then when Peter heard the rooster realizing that's what Jesus said and I denied Him three times and Jesus looked upon Him. Can you imagine the eyes of the Son of God looking upon that beloved disciple, the Apostle Peter and then say to Him, didn't I tell you this? That's what we will do now. No, no, no, no.

Looking at Him and said, there's hope. This is not the end. He's speaking about the Son of God, you know.

And He turned to them and He said to them, the same power that I received from My Father, that same power I will descend upon you. And you will do greater things than Me. Brother and sister, I don't know if you are like me.

You know, I'm one of these terrible characters. I'm so sensitive and I'm so, what is the word, you know, it's just it's just, you know, it's just the way that we are wired. Maybe in the United States you're not wired.

You know, you turn down with cables or whatever. But the way that we are wired in Canada and Janice knows this. I'm one of these people, I need a ton of encouragement.

If you don't want me to ever come and preach here again, tell me tonight and say you were a disaster and never see me again. Of course you won't do that to me. But can you imagine being a follower of Christ? Oh! Can you imagine, we're going to touch on that this evening if we have time, that one of the disciples came to him and he was praying at a certain place and he came to him and he said to him, they all probably said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples to pray.

You see, they watched him and they saw the power of God. And they saw him touching the lives of people. And he said to them, I'm going to bestow that upon you.

So, what is the word? Oh, I love this word. It's the Greek, it comes from the word dunam. It's where we get our word dynamite from.

Or dunamis. And this word, which is so unique, this word is found at 119 places in the New Testament. The Greek language.

And it has 16 different meanings that come to the surface because of this. And so Jesus looked and he said, you will receive this power. So he said, what kind of power is it? Listen, it's not power to do great and wonderful things for God.

It can be part of that, you know. But you know what it is? It's power to live right 24 hours a day. He said, what do you mean? Oh, my brother and sister, if God can keep us from sin for a minute, can't he keep us from sin for two minutes? He said, what does it mean? Oh, you say, are you speaking about a degree of perfection? No, no, no, no, no.

But you see, when you study the efficacy of the blood, I have a little book that I'm putting out here tonight for you. It's called The Power of the Blood of Jesus Christ by a man with the name of Dr. Andrew Murray. And he's got a chapter in there about cleansing through the blood.

And explain to us how when the Apostle John said, if we walk in the light, this God is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And then he took a statement and he said, and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, and it's present imperative keeps on cleansing us from all sin. It's present imperative.

He's keeping us, purifying us. We don't need sin in our lives to keep us humble. No.

So you say, what are you speaking about? It's a life in the realm of the Spirit. You say, to what degree? We come short of the glory of God. Oh, man, if you ever study the doctrine of the depravity of sin, and God comes to us for one moment and just lift it up and show us the depth of our need, it's brutal.

But if we walk in the light, this God is in the light. Let me try to close this. You say 19, 16 different words.

Can you give me an example? Oh, I would love to. Listen, do you remember the parable of the talents? Oh, it's beautiful. Do you remember what Jesus said? He gave unto them talents according to their several ability.

Do you know what's that word, ability, in the Greek language? It is the word dunamis. And my brother and my sister, every one of us are precious to you. The pastor mentioned to me about the leadership and the deacons and the elders and Ian and Enrico and the ministry and everything.

Oh, I became so jealous in my heart. I thought, oh, I want to meet these people. I want to get to know them.

I want to make sure, I want to sense what is in their heart, what is the passion and their desire, you know, to really see what the leadership is all about. And, you know, when Jesus said He gave unto them talents according to their ability, that word ability is the word dunamis. That means that every one of us, you can't be a passenger in the bus.

Every one of us, we are the part in this ministry. And so what is it? We need to find the will of God. We need to follow it.

And we need to finish the will of God. I mean, I remember reading about this elderly man in the city of Chicago. And he was in his seventies and he had a burden for souls and wanted to reach people for Christ.

And he couldn't preach. He was not able, you know, to communicate to that great degree. But you know what God led him upon his heart and said, go and stand in the corner of the street on a Friday in Chicago and what you do, you have a bundle of tracts and when people come by what you do, you just give them a tract and ask them to go and read it.

And he thought, oh, they're going to scoff and laugh at me. And you know, God said, you better just pray about it. And that must have been what he did.

And he would go on a Friday with a bundle of tracts in the corner of the street in Chicago. And people would come to work in the morning. And he had such a beautiful attitude, you know.

And he would just say to them, they'd come by and say, can I give you this to read? And his heart was so tender and so beautiful they'd virtually hardly ever turn him down. And so that's what he did. And one day, he was on his way home and as he passed the house, the Holy Spirit of God whispered into his heart and said, I want you to go to that house and give that man a tract.

And he said, oh no, I can't do that. And God convicted him and said, I want. And he passed the house and God got a hold of him and said, I told you something, I want you listening.

And he turned around and he went to the house and knocked at the door of the house and no one came to the door. Huh. What a great fool for Jesus.

No. He kept knocking. And after the seventh time that he knocked, he heard something and a man came and opened the door and this rough character stood there and said, what is it that you want? And this elderly man in his seventies had this tract and he said, just read this would you? And the man grabbed the tract and slammed the door and 14 days later he passed the house again and guess what happened? God spoke in his heart and said, go back to the house.

And he said, oh no. You see what happened? He went back to the house and he knocked at the door of the house and he heard these footsteps coming open the door and he was this man. And the man said, oh it's you.

And he said, yes. The man said, come in. And he came in and he came into the kitchen and they had the beam.

And he said, 14 days ago, you see that little bench, that chair, wooden chair, I was standing on it. There was a rope around this beam. The rope was around my neck.

I was going to take my life. And he said, you knocked. And you knocked.

And you knocked. And you knocked. And he said, eventually I took the rope off.

And I opened the door and I took this tract and I came and I sat on this little bench. And I asked Jesus to save me. And today I'm saved.

My brother and my sister, listen here. We've got good neighbors. And forgive me for saying this.

They're on their way to hell in a basket. Lost. We bumped into people.

I bumped into a young man last week sitting at the chair, at the bench there at the swimming pool because I've got nine screws on my back and I need exercise and I've got to this place to swim. And he sat there with this old Bible. And I look at it and I said to him, are you reading the Bible? I said, is this the Bible? He said, yes.

I said, who gave it to you? He said, my grandmother. And I said, what are you reading? He said, I'm reading in the beginning. And I saw Genesis.

And I said to him, so why are you reading this? He said, I'm trying to find God. Oh. You know what? They're all over the place.

They're lost. But you know what? We see them as trees walking. Let me close.

Can I give you one more word? I love this word. It's a little woman in the Gospel of Luke. You know, Luke in the Greek language is so rich.

He used about 50 technical medical terms. When he speaks through the eye of a needle, he doesn't use the normal word. No, no, no, no.

That was the needle that the surgeon was using. And Luke introduced us to a little woman that we read in the other Gospels. And the Bible says she was suffering from the issue of blood.

She had a blood disease. And the Bible says she spent all her money trying to get through this thing. You know what it was.

But Luke said, this was a disease of the blood. And this little woman, you remember her? In Luke chapter 8, she said, if I could just touch the hem of His garment, that's all I want to do. And ah, you remember what happened.

Jesus was in the midst of the crowds. And as He was in the midst of the crowds, she saw Him. And I mean, it's almost like Zacchaeus.

He had to climb in a tree in order to see Jesus. But she saw Jesus and she said, if I can just touch the hem of His garment, I would be able. I would be able.

Maybe I'd be healed. And she came closer and closer and closer. And here was Jesus of Nazareth.

Oh dear me. And she touched Him. And the moment she touched Him, you know that passage, the moment He touched Him, the Bible says she was healed.

And Jesus said, someone touch Me. Ha! Can't do it today because next week is a new church around the corner. And it's called the touching church.

And when He spit in the ground and put the wet ground into the eyes of the man, you know, they would say, oh, this is a spitting church. This is where we are today, you know. No, no, no, no.

Jesus said, someone has touched Me. And so you see what happened. The disciples said, our lovers, the disciples said, everyone is trying to touch You.

And He said, no. And then He said, someone touch Me because power, dunamis, has come from it. So what is it? It's the power of God.