Three-Fold Vision - Part 3

For one reason only, I never heard him pray. It's one thing for me to stand here and talk to you about God, it's another thing to talk to God about you. And if I want to, as I started my life over again, I'd give more time to prayer, more time to Bible study. But again, I listened to that precious old woman in prayer, I've never forgotten it. And the other thing, as David said this morning, I was going to say, I have a whole shelf of books on how to be filled with the Spirit, fruits of the Spirit, gifts of the Spirit, love of the Spirit, joy of the Spirit. Except David, I've never heard anybody ever mention the grief of the Holy Ghost. If all your experience of the Holy Ghost is clapping your hands and stomping your feet, you didn't get the real thing. There's an old saying, laugh and the world laughs with you. It's true, laugh and the church laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone. But the key to revival is what? In this book. You don't need a new book, you don't need to buy those wonderful books at the back, except mine. But what does it say? He that goeth forth, what? Weeping. It's amazing, Paul says to Timothy, I remember your tears, did he give him five lessons on weeping? What does it say in Jude? Praying in the Holy Ghost is not praying in tongues. Some church have made, I believe in tongues, but some have made chatter. Praying in the Holy Ghost is praying with the strength of the Holy Ghost, the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, the grief of the Holy Ghost. Jesus wept. Are you better than Jesus? David mentioned this morning, what, Genesis 34 he mentioned, but Genesis 32, Moses comes down from the mountain. What did he do? Well, he'd been with God. You get like the people you live with. He'd been with God. What did God say? These people had seen signs and wonders and miracles, they forgot all they needed was a golden calf, they blotted the world out. Aaron, the anointed of God, was meeting half-naked people. He's shown back to him. They've seen the sea divided, they've seen signs and wonders, and Moses starts praying for them. God says, go down the mountain, see what your brothers have done. I'm angry with them. What does it say there? I'll tell you what the paraphrase of it says in the Methodist hymn book. Let Moses in the spirit groan, and God cries out, let me alone. Did God ever say that when you prayed? You want me to pat you on the back and say the most sanctified person on earth, the best preacher, gift of tongues, you sing at big meetings and on the baloney? Later in the chapter, the high priest says to Moses, it not only says God was angry, he was exceedingly angry. He was very angry. And Moses says, I stand there between a living God and a dying people. Then it says, God says, Moses, let me alone. Do you think he said that without tears? Do you think that most amazing prayer, a little bit further in the chapter where he says, God, let me die. Wasn't your wonderful hero, Nathan Hale, who said, I'm sorry, I have only one life and one body to give to die for my country. The wicked English killed him. The reason we don't get revival is we don't pay the price for it. One word is the key. Obedience. This is David's first time here. I'm sure he'll come again. It's such a blessing. Everybody's gone around the world, they want him back. This may be my last trip. I'm not sure if I can have my choice. I don't care if I never preach again. What I'd like to do. I've got a precious, wonderful, gifted wife. She lived in a home where they had servants. Now, she's a servant to everybody. A woman, 83 years of age, works from seven in the morning and hardly goes to bed before 10 at night. We get 20 to 30 visitors a week to the house. Now, she serves everybody. Puts me to shame. I'd like to find a little house somewhere, quiet, where nobody knows my address. Every week, people come from the ends of the earth to talk. What do you do when a man calls from Australia and says, will you talk to me for half an hour if I fly over? I said, yes, he came. We took the prayer meeting and some of those great prayer meetings. Jack Morrison was in and his wife, men would pray. We took the man home to supper. He stayed the night. Mother said, Doctor, he's a medical doctor, do you have prayer meetings in Australia? He said, oh yes, we have prayer meeting in Australia, but we don't get upset. He thought praying with tears and agony was being upset. How do you think the Apostle Paul prayed in Romans 9? I could wish myself a curse. We don't want to die, do we? As Paul said, we won't die. The Lord sanctified a bit of me, but he said, sanctify you wholly. Okay. I count one of the greatest honours of my life to talk time and time again with Dr. Chaucer. One day, as I went in his office, well, he said, don't ever come to Chicago without talking with me. So I went down to his office one day and he said, I've told this so often, look at the rug. Well, at that time, there was no Kmart. There was a place called Kresge's, and he told me, I think he paid 59 cents for that little rug made up of twisted bits of cloth. So I looked at the rug. I wish I'd offered him some money for it, but I might have made a fetish of it. To me, he's the greatest man of God I've ever met, not the greatest preacher, but he had an intimacy with God. And he just said this to me, and you see, I said, sure. He said, I come to my office at eight o'clock in the morning. He used a good old Bible word. I get down on my belly at eight o'clock. I get up at 12 o'clock, and I haven't said a word of prayer. I've just worshipped. You'll find in this hymn book, and I'm trying to put a hymn book together with Lillian Harvey. We've quoted quite often from one of the favorites of Dr. Tozer. I can't think of his name right now. Oh, William Faber. Faber wrote, and Tozer often quoted, here's Tozer on his belly four hours without saying a word of prayer, gazing. That's the very thing that the greatest mission ever went to China said, gazing, gazing. Thou hast bid me gaze upon thee, and thy beauty fills my soul. Forth I fall by thy transforming power. Thou hast made me whole. But Tozer would quote over and over again, laying there as though Christ was visible. How beautiful.