Prayer Summit - Part 1 by Gerhard Dutoit

When someone comes to speak about prayer, and I'm always scared to death about this, when someone comes to speak about developing intimacy with God, so many times we have an impression that, you know, this person really knows how to do it. And brother and sister, if you find someone who gives you the impression that he knows how to do it, you've found someone who really doesn't know how to do it. That's just the essence of the reality.

You know, when God said in the Old Testament, the fire must burn continually upon the altar, it's not what happened yesterday, or last week, or a year ago, or any of those kind of things. We are talking about the reality of the freshness of the presence of God. And there's a reason why there was manna in the morning.

There was a reason why the Old Testament said it was morning, noon, and night. There's a reason why Daniel in the Old Testament would three times a day would just go and seek the face of God. There's a reason why Christ in the New Testament, I mean, he was sinless in his birth, supernatural in his life, he was God himself.

And I say this with great respect and caution, he didn't have to spend time in prayer. He was God himself. But he became man, and identified himself with man.

And when he became man, he learned obedience by the things that he suffered, the epistle to the Hebrews he sent to us. And he gave us this incredible example of what it means to be indwelled by the Spirit of God, live this Christian life, developing intimacy in the presence of God, and really learn what it means to pray. And Mark in his Gospel, when he came to us about the life of Christ, the key word in Mark's Gospel is the word eusis in the Greek language.

And it's the word immediately. It's very difficult to analyze the Gospel of Mark, because it's just event after event that is taking place in the life of Christ. And you come into the first chapter of Mark's Gospel, and you discover 24 hours in the life of Christ in one day.

And you go through that chapter, and you say to yourself, how in the world is it possible for someone to survive a day like this? And yet in the middle of the Gospel of Mark, the Bible says, early in the morning, deep in the night, Christ went into a secret place and really prayed. And Dr. Campbell Morgan said, it can be translated as it was his daily custom. Many times early in the morning, many times deeper than night, many times he went into a secret place, and many times he prayed.

And so we have this incredible privilege that when Paul said to us in Colossians, the fullness of God dwelleth in Christ, and we are that fullness again. And brother and sister, we've got this incredible inheritance. But I want to be absolutely transparent with you.

I don't think we've scratched the surface this weekend. And there's a couple of things I would like to challenge you about this morning. And I hope I'm right in saying this.

I wonder if it is not the possibility that God right here in the city of St. John, for those of you who have been with us since Saturday morning, some were Friday night, and Saturday, all those hours, and Saturday night and Sunday, I wonder if it's not possible that God can create in us a longing to see Him giving birth to something as some movement of prayer in the city. See, I would love to come into St. John. It doesn't have to be me.

You know, I mean, who are we anyway? But I would love to come into this city and do what we did in Moncton in 2009. We brought about 60 churches together for a week of prayer. And we found ourselves climbing underneath the burden of God, morning after morning, evening after evening, and began to pray as churches together.

I think it's possible here. But brother and sister, the way it's going to start is when we find a group of people who are willing to begin to pray about it. So we have some pastors here that has been with us from Friday night on, and I have indirectly mentioned this to them, and so I'm going to do something.

Okay, $50. Sure, take a check and put it in your pocket. Here we are.

I'm sorry. I don't even know you. What's your name? It should have been Adam.

So what I'm going to do, and I want you to think about this, because Pastor Andrew and Pastor Dave, who has been walking with us, we're just going to pray about this. And we have about 7,000 to 9,000 people all over the world that are praying for us every day. And they are carrying what we are trying to, or what God is trying to do, and us being the vessels.

And what I'm going to do, I'm going to send a list like this around with my little black notebook, and what I want you to do, if you are interested and beginning to pray for the possibility of a prayer encounter here in St. John in the future, it could be, if we pray this thing through, it could be within, where are we now, maybe the fall of next year, God willing. So why do we have to wait so long? Oh, brother and sister, the Bible says, the preparation of the heart belongs to God. How dare we walk into something that God hasn't prepared? And so what we are going to do, I'm going to ask you to put your name down your email address, your telephone number, I'm going to give it to these pastors, and they are going to coordinate this.

And maybe once every three months, or once a month, they will be in touch with you and see it. We're having a prayer encounter. We're having a prayer Sunday.

We're doing it on a Sunday night. And we are coming together for prayer. We're going to have a time of worship.

Someone has shared with us something about prayer. And then we're going to break up into groups and we're going to begin to pray about the possibility for a prayer summit and begin to pray for the city. So that's what I want to do.

And so I'm going to send this around with my pen. You need to put down your email address and your telephone number, maybe the church that you are from. And then we just go systematically around.

I'm sending this pen. Now this pen came out of New Zealand. And this pen is, please make sure Gerard gets me back.

So that's what we are going to do. And so let's just start here. This gentleman has become my friend.

Any of you know him? Yes. Do you think he's unorganized? I want to give him all my material. He doesn't know this yet.

I want to give him all my material. See my brother, can you put all of this together for me? And we want to put it into a little book that we can give to people. So now you can't say no.

There you are. So this is what we are going to do. And listen, we only have an hour and a half.

So we pray together and it's finished now. Twelve o'clock there are pastors coming. We'll be spending some time.

What we want to do this morning, I want to... Adam? Adam? I got his name now. So what I want to do this morning, I want to explore with you the whole concept of the Old Testament as it relates to prayer. And you know I really struggle with it.

I thought this morning, I wish we would have had time to do this. Just to throw this open and say, those of you who have been in all the sessions, do you have any question about when it comes to the concept of developing intimacy with God? But I know if we're going to do that, I don't know how far we will get with the material. But what I want to do is I want to explore the Old Testament.

So let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we want to thank you this morning because you have been very gracious and you have been very precious to us. We want to thank you that just in a matter of three days, not even three days, the 24 hours that became Saturday and the 24 hours that became Sunday and Friday night when we came together and now again here this morning.

In such a short period of time, have you been allowed, have you allowed us to be able to cover so much of amazing and incredible material as it relates to prayer. And yet Father, we confess today your presence. That there is a sense in which we know really so little.

That the inadequacy of our understanding of really who God is and what he's able to do is so limited because of the depth of the effect that the depravity of sin has had upon us. And yet we are so thankful that you said to us in your Word, if a son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed. Thank you that you said to us by faith we are saved.

Thank you Father God that faith without works is dead and yet saving faith works. And we are so thankful today that we have been able to learn. And I don't think that there is anyone here this morning in this little gathering and I've been overwhelmed with probably around 30 people that would come in a Monday morning of all times.

And God you know I stood here this morning and I felt in my heart, how is it that we haven't planned this thing better and spend the next three or four mornings like this together exploring Scripture and just climb underneath the burden of God and spend the evenings together and systematically dissecting the burden of God and ask you to teach us the language of prayer so that we would become men and women saturated with the understanding of persevering and prevailing and sometimes agonizing under the depth of the burden of God. Thank you that your Word is set unto us that we need to keep on looking at Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. Thank you that you have said to us let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

Thank you for that military connotation and concept of the understanding that when the Hebrews said let us run with patience the race that this is a military term that it really means that we need to hold courageously under consistent fire. And father we know this morning that prayer is not necessarily a weapon but prayer is a battlefield and that sometimes the casualties are high and the bullets are flying and we find ourselves in the level of the trenches where we're facing the reality of the onslaughts of the evil one. And yet God you have said to us in your Word that when the enemy shall come in like a flood the spirit of the Lord shall rise up astounded against him.

Thank you that you said to us that we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and the powers of darkness and that we are facing the reality. Now father we're not looking for a demon behind every bush but we are so conscious that you said that we are not ignorant of the devices of the evil one. And we are aware this morning that the enemy of our souls absolutely hate a Christian who have learned the secret of climbing underneath the burden of God and systematically dissecting this burden of God and pray this thing through to God because he realized that what that Christian will do is that he will discover the depth of the will of God and as he pray according to the will of God, God will be able to work in his own heart and he will do that which God wants him to do and see the eternal fruit of that which is relevant and real in his relationship with God.

Father we have this little time here this morning and all we want to learn more of the language of prayer and yet God some of the greatest ways that we can learn this is when we actually do it and spend time with you and ask you to help us to persevere and understanding what the scripture says as it becomes part of our lives and we find ourselves praying through the scriptures and so as you create the fullness of your spirit in our hearts and a spirit of prayer and a spirit of faith and a confidence and a sense of reality that eventually we can stand back in amazement and recognize that this God that we are serving is a prayer answering God. Bless your word this morning. We want to be like those two disciples on the way to Emos that when you departed out of their presence that they turned to one another and said did not our hearts burn within us when he spoke to us in the way.

Father in Jesus name we pray give us the burning heart for Jesus sake. Amen. Like if you tell me your Bible if you will.