Tag: Prayer

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date January 16, 2022

“The Blessing that Lies in Prayer“

“ The Blessing That Lies in Prayer ”

February 26, 1956

Now, we’re dealing with the book of John. And tonight, begins the first two sermons on prayer from the book of John. And I’m going to read the passages. The deal, I’ve skipped them up to now in the 14th chapter and in the 15th. And we’ll run ahead to the 16th. And read three verses, two verses. John 14:13 and 14, whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. Then, 15:7, if ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you. Then 16:23 and 24. And in that day, ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name. Now, ask and ye shall receive that your joy may be full. Now, that’s what our Lord said in these three chapters about prayer. I don’t think it is in need of any great amount of exegesis or interpretation, it’s simply here. It is waiting for faith to lay hold of it, that’s all. So, tonight and next Sunday night, I want to talk about the blessing that lies in prayer.

Now, there are two concepts of prayer that seem to be mutually exclusive of each other. One is what we call the objective concept. And the other, the subjective. Now, I know you know what that means, but if there’s anything I don’t like to hear a preacher uses technical terms that he doesn’t explain, and then he goes soaring off and he’s lost connection with his audience. He’s having a good time, and they’re not coming. So, for the sake of the half dozen who might not know what I mean, when I say subjective and objective; subjective means having to do with the subject and objective having to do with the object. It is very simple, and some people, some people, when they talked about prayer, bear down on the subjective element, I, the subject am praying and all the good that prayer does, is what it does to the subject, namely me. It soothes me and calms me and rests me and inspires me, and maybe illuminates me in some major. Thus, it’s subjectively valuable to me.

That’s about all you hear about prayer in the day in which we live. If you are an avid reader of the Reader’s Digest, which God save the mark, I hope you’re not. That there is nothing wrong with it. That’s its trouble. You know, what they say about the Reader’s Digest? Oh, how terrible. Oh, how wonderful. Oh, and that’s the Reader’s Digest, those three sentences. But anyhow, if you’re an avid reader of the Reader’s Digest, you will get a lot of talks on prayer in that little book. But they’re all subjective. It’s what prayer didn’t to come me, what prayer did to soothe me, what prayer did to relax me, what it did to arrest me. It is the subjective element that is prayed up, played up in, in most of the modern articles and sermons on prayer.

Then, there is what we call the objective element. That is, what prayer does for you and to change things. Those who believe in the objective power of prayer have a motto on their wall “Prayer Changes Things.” And that hasn’t anything to do with the subject. Prayer to such people is a kind of lever which you can use over a fulcrum to raise the world. It’s a kind of an Aladdin’s lamp which you can rub and get what you want. It’s a fairy godmother you can call to your fingertips and brief her, and she’ll come back within a few hours giving you exactly what you want.

So, we have these two ideas of prayer. Prayer that doesn’t have any objective meaning, anything outside of you, you can’t make the sun stand still, and you can’t get anybody delivered from disease, you can’t open a field that isn’t open. You can’t do anything actually objectively; it’s only what it does for you. And the other, neglect what it does for you and talks about being able to do just any old thing in answer to prayer. Well, which are we going to adopt and which does the Bible teach?

Well, I’m very happy to tell you tonight that those two views are not mutually exclusive. One does not cancel the other out and you’re not forced to take one position and reject the other one. Both of these are true. It is both true that prayer has a subjective power over me. It is also true that prayer offered in the name of Jesus Christ can actually get out into nature and change the face of the world.

Now, let me give you two Old Testament illustrations of this. There was the man Elijah once. He was up on a mountain and was surrounded by 400 prophets of Baal. He was in trouble and they were going to tear him to bits. He had already whipped them up until they were so angry that they’d have killed him certainly if God hadn’t come to his rescue. And here at the close of the day, at the time of the evening sacrifice, Elijah prayed a little prayer just about that long, about I guess, five lines long in an Arab column and asked God Almighty to come and prove there was a God in Israel. And immediately fire came down on the altar and consumed not only the sacrifice but the altar itself and the stones and the water and the dust. And everybody cried, great is Jehovah, He is the Lord.

Now, that’s the objective element in prayer. You could go through your Bible and find time after time when men called on God and God did things outside of them. But on the other hand, there was a man one time who was deeply convicted of his sin and his name was David. And he dropped to his knees and said, have mercy upon me, O God according to Thy loving kindness, and according to the magnitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my sin. Renew a right spirit within me and purge me with hysop and I shall be clean, and restore unto me the joy of my salvation. And all of that was happening inside of David. And it all did happen inside of David. You could have stood on the outside and never seen any of those prayers answered. They were subjectively answered. They were wrought on the subject, not on the object on the outside, but on the subject, the man himself.

So, the Bible teaches both. The Bible teaches that prayer has an amazing influence and power over the individual. And it also teaches that prayer properly made in the will of God, can bring answers that can change the face of the world, where it is the will of God that it should be so.

Now, lest you should get a wrong notion about prayer, I’d like to say this most disillusioning thing and I think also discouraging thing. Nobody likes to have his toys taken away from him, nobody. We’re all grown up children, and we all like to rattle a toy. I play with my grandchildren’s toys to this day, as old as I am, and we all like toys. And I don’t like to take away from you any little crutch that you might have leaned on, but the nicest man in the world is the man who will kick a crutch out from under you after you outgrown your need of the crutch. If your leg is healed and you don’t need the crutch, you may get a fixation there and become a slave to that crutch. And somebody comes along and kicks it out from under you and you’ll whimper for a while and then find you can walk without it. So, you’re delivered from that bondage.

Now, what I mean is that prayer, in itself, is exactly nothing at all. There are those who make prayer to be something. And I’ll talk about it tonight and I will say prayer does this and prayer does that, and you should pray and prayer does this, and yet I want you to understand me to begin with that prayer in itself isn’t anything at all. For the glory of prayer lies in this, that it engages God. The wonder of prayer is that it engages God and brings the human soul into contact with the everlasting God. And prayer itself isn’t anything. Men can pray to the Virgin. Men can pray to Buddha. They can pray to an idol on a hilltop. They can pray to Zeus up on the top of the mount. They can pray to Jupiter. They can pray to the God of the ocean or Aeolis, the God of the winds, and they’ve done it down the years. Mohamidans get down five times a day on their knees and pray to Allah.

So, prayer in itself isn’t anything. Prayer is simply addressing an instrument. And if the instrument is working, why, prayer is communication and it will get you through. But, if it isn’t working, it’s talking into a dead telephone. And a great deal of prayer is simply talking into a dead telephone; there’s nobody on the other end, and if they were, they couldn’t hear because the phone is dead. It’s been pulled out from the wall. If we had all the time taken up in something useful that people have spent talking into a dead telephone in the name of God over the past centuries, I think we could make the world better. Now, if we’re not geared into God, and if we haven’t engaged God, and if our souls are not clean so God will hear us, and if we’re not in the will of God, then prayer means nothing at all. You can pray until you’re white-faced. You can pray all night.

And I have no idea but what some people substitute prayer for obedience. For instance, you’ve wronged somebody, you’ve done some evil thing. I don’t know how far I’ll get tonight. I’ve missed a track here. Don’t tell these young preachers down here, but I have jumped over my outline, away from my outline. But, my brethren, it is perfectly impossible to pray as a substitute for obedience to God’s will. A man has wronged somebody, he’s done some evil thing, or he said an unkind, cutting, unfriendly, unpleasant, cruel thing. And yet, instead of ever going back and confessing that and apologizing and getting that straightened out, they’ll attend 50 prayer meetings rather than go back and say, I’m sorry. There’ll be there if you announce a half night of prayer, say we’re going to pray until the cock crows, they will be right there on their knees, but they won’t obey God. So, prayer may be substituted for obedience. And that kind of prayer is nothing, nothing whatsoever.

There was a man one time who stole a golden wedge and a goodly Babylonish garment. And the power of God left Israel and Israel was driven in disgrace and humiliation before her enemies. Joshua, the man of prayer lay on his face crying unto Jehovah, oh, my God, why did you desert Israel and allow Israel to flee before her enemies? And God said to Joshua, get up off your face, what are you down there praying for? Get up off your your knees. There’s an accursed thing in Israel. Get rid of that cursed thing and you can cut down on your overhead. You won’t have to pray so much if you’ll get right. So, Joshua called them all before him, and he said there’s an accursed thing somewhere and they went through the ritual they did finding out, how to find out who was which, and they cast lots and pretty soon Achan was found. And they just led Achan out into the valley and stoned him to death and piled rocks on him. And then they went and won the victory. Prayer could have been a substitute for getting rid of the Christian thing that was in their midst.

So, my dear friend, there may be times when prayer is offensive to God Almighty. Read the first chapter of Isaiah and see if it’s not true. Prayer is offensive to God Almighty when it is made in disobedience. It is offensive to God Almighty when there is no intention to obey. When we’re not clean and we don’t intend to be clean. And over top of our pollution we go to God and pray the Lord’s Prayer and all the other prayers we know, read the Psalms of David and make up prayers of our own and talk to God by the hour, and still we’re not living right.

Now Brother, prayer can be a snare and a delusion and exactly mean nothing at all to the soul. So, when I talk about prayer and the power of prayer tonight, I don’t want to be understood to mean that I can simply, by mumbling a lot of prayers, move God or influence my own soul in any degree. You know over in Tibet, they have Tibetan prayer wheels. I’ve seen those Tibetan prayer wheels. They write prayers down on them, and then everybody walks by. There are long affairs, rollers, sort of, big rollers and those prayers are on them and they spin them. They’ve set on rollers so they spin nicely. And everybody that goes along spins them. They just keep them spinning all day. And you know, I thought of a way for a modern mechanized Tibetan to really pray himself some prayers. You know, if I were, if I were a Tibetan worshiper and I wanted to really spin the prayer wheel, you know what I do? I take the fan belt, or the fan on my automobile to a shop somewhere and have a prayer engraved on it. And then after that, it would be just as easy as could be. Let the whirling of the engine spin your wheel and you’d certainly pile up merit. But after all, what would that mean? It would mean absolutely nothing at all.

And all of the prayers that ascend to God, all the moldings and mumblings that ascend to God, unless they go up in purity and faith and obedience and righteousness, it’s so much wasted wind. But, granted that the subject has met the conditions. Granted, the blood of Jesus Christ has made him clean. Granted, that he is in the will of God, so far as he knows. Granted that he’s a student of the word and is open to see what God would have him do. Grant that. Grant that the man’s motive is right, and that he’s praying in the will of God. Here are some of the benefits of prayer, subjective benefits of prayer. Next week, I’m going to talk about the objective benefits of prayer what God will do on the outside from an unanswered prayer. But tonight, with possibly overlapping here and there, I only want to run over hastily, what prayer means to the individual?

Well, I think that it’s only a religious cliché to repeat that prayer is the greatest privilege ever granted man, that the Ancient of Days, high and lifted up, should so stoop down and condescend to listen to the prayers of such worms as you and I, sinners by nature, and for a while by choice. Little men and women with breath in our nostrils, with our tiny hearts beating away, ready to stop one of these days, and let us collapse, hopeless chunks of clay and animated dust that we are. And then that the great God Almighty, who made the sun and rolled it around in his hand and flung it against the darkness, and Who made the stars and studded the skies with them, and who cut out the rivers and pushed up the mountains and girded the world, and made man upon it, and gave him food to eat and air to breathe and water to drink, that that great God, Who holds the world in the hollow of his hand, that He should come down from His immensity and should bend His ear, and like a mother bending over a sick child, trying to catch the faintest whisper meant to catch the ear of love. That I say, is the greatest privilege in all the world.

Therefore, prayer should be the most sacred thing in the world, and it should be made with the greatest sense of thanksgiving and gratitude. Not only is prayer the highest honor that can be granted to any being, but it’s the most profitable investment in all the world.

Now, I’ve had this experience and I suppose some of you have. I’ve had the experience of having the whole world on my back. Talk about a monkey on your back. Talk about an ape on your shoulders. Talk about the old man in the woods with his legs locked around your neck, choking you to death. Talk about Atlas carrying the world on his shoulder. And you felt as if you were all of these things and a whole lot of things man hadn’t thought of yet.

And you drop to your knees with your open Bible and got still and quiet, read the Word and looked up to God and didn’t ask for much. But looked up to God and got calm, and got orientated and adjusted to God in your own soul. And pretty soon, the world began to roll off of Atlas’ back. The old man in the woods began to unlock his bony knees from around your neck. And the burden began to roll off from your shoulders and all those apes got off your back. And you stood up rested and good, then you felt as if you’d been three weeks in Florida.

Now, I’ve had that experience happened to me. When if I had just gone just five minutes longer, I would have quit the ministry, resigned my church, and maybe run off from home. But, by the grace of God, there’s such a thing as making a profitable investment in prayer just for its subjective value, just for what it’ll do for you inside of you, just for the tuning up of your instrument and for the harmonizing of your soul within you.

And yet, while it is certainly the greatest honor and the most profitable thing, it is also the hardest thing in the world for Christians to do. I have no doubt that much of the squirrel cage activity in religious circles today is a substitute for prayer. Prayer is the hardest thing in all the world and you know why? Because you have to be right to pray. You can be superstitious. You can write chain letters. I got a chain letter lying up here on my, my desk, read Matthew 15, 16 and 17 and then copy all this out and send it to four other people. If you don’t do it, you’ll have bad luck. What kind of witch doctors have we got in this country anyhow? What kind of hopeless pagans and heathens out of the woods and pagans out of the jungle? What kind of chicken killing, dog killing, idol makers do we have in these days sending out chain letters. Brother, sister, if you get a chain letter saying, praise God from whom all blessings flow and tear it into 999 bits and throw it away. Let the winds of God blow through your home and blow out that trace of superstition, that vile residue of heathen iniquity that men have made in the chain letters, offering your good luck if you copy them and threatening bad luck if you don’t. My God’s name isn’t luck, it’s Jesus. And Jesus Christ never put me in the hand of good luck. He never made the postman to be my keeper. Well, prayer changes things alright and the greatest thing in the world is when it changes you inside. And yet it’s hard, because it means obedience. It means a mood.

Some years ago, I recommended a book, a great mystic classic, and it was sold so widely that I don’t know whether they had to do it, but Harper’s came out with another edition almost immediately. And it was bought everywhere and people got it and yet some people said is this all? Is this all? They couldn’t read the thing. It was The Letters and Counsels of Fenelon. They couldn’t read it.

When somebody told me, that when a head and a book come together and there’s a hollow sound, you don’t allows need to blame the book. And when we read deeply spiritual things and they mean nothing to us, it can only be the proof of one thing, that we’re not in a spiritual mood to understand that book. If I can read Fenelon and not get anything out of it, it’s because I have a heart that is carnivorous. It feeds on flesh and enjoys munching on the ragged, bloody bones of this world, and it’s not been prepared by the Holy Ghost to read anything as rarefied and lofty as the writings of that man of God and others like him.

So, it’s the hardest thing in the world–praying. Saying the Lord’s prayer isn’t anything. That’s nothing. Anybody can say the Lord’s Prayer. All you need is time. Just have time to memorize it and away you go. But really getting in gear, getting your heart right with God and being in a position so that the Lord’s Prayer means anything to you. That’s very, very hard. And it’s so hard that people would rather do anything at all. They’d rather join something, organize something, travel somewhere, fly someplace, write something, say something, do something, paint something, spade up something. God’s people will just do anything to keep from praying. And yet prayer is the most profitable investment you can make and the most highly honored activity that you can take part in.

Now, prayer has run the church for 2,000 years and nothing else. We imagine other things around the church. We imagined money does it. And you’d think to hear us preachers, that money was absolutely indispensable. I tell them in New York that the treasurer’s office is the least important part of the Alliance. And I’d like to have you know, and I say this at the risk of some of you taking me literally and staying away from the paymaster booth back there. But I’ll tell you this, that if you haven’t got anything but money, you’re not helping this church any brother, not a bit. If that’s all you’ve got, oh, give it. We can use it for God’s glory around the world. I don’t say withhold it, but I just say this, that if you haven’t anything but money, you still don’t have much of anything. It isn’t money that runs the church and it isn’t brains that runs the church. I like a well-witted brain. And I get with somebody that’s got a sharp mind, I like to get around him and whet a little of the rust off my mind on the mind of some bright fellow. I like to read books that are sharp and that demand attention. But I realize that brains haven’t run the church for 2000 years any more than money. Neither have gifts and personality.

These are the days when personality is supposed to run the church. We want personality, but personality never ran anything yet except to show the church of Jesus Christ doesn’t run on personality. If you met some of the people that have written the great hymns, you’d shrug and turn away. I’ve seen the pictures of some of the great hymnists. Some of the weirdest looking fellows you ever saw that would make McAfee and me look good by comparison, really! But that is, funny looking little fellows. What was this fellow’s name you and I talked about Ray? William Walsham How. Isn’t that a name to conjure with William Walsham How. What a man that was. He must have been and yet, I’ve seen his picture and I don’t even look that bad. He had no more personality, no more personality than a fried egg, and yet, we try to make personality to be everything.

And we teach young people to part their hair in a certain way and wear argyle socks parted on one side and come down the aisle in a certain manner and do things in a certain way We teach them just where to put their hands and all the rest. And when it’s all over, we’ve got the sweetest cage full of trained monkeys you ever saw in all your life. Personality never saved anybody and personality was never used of God particularly down to this day. Neither brains, your money and your personality nor pull, prestige and pull.

People would like to have pull and prestige. And the average preacher if he can get his picture taken with a governor or a senator, even if he’s only on the back seat, 19th roll back on the far end, behind the post, he’ll sell it or to send it around to his friends. I was on that platform when Governor big dome had his picture taken. Brethren, how carnal can we get and still claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. There was no beauty in Him that we should desire Him. And He was so common looking that Judas had to kiss Him so everybody know who He was. If He’d been nine feet high and a basketball player, or if His shoulders had been 14 feet across with pads on and he’d been a great end for Notre Dame, they’d have known Him easily. They’d have said, that great big good-looking hunk of a fella back there. Go get Him and you’ve got Jesus. That Jesus was so plain looking that Judas had to go up and kiss Him on the cheek so they would know it wasn’t Peter or somebody else.

No, my brethren, prayer has run the church for 2000 years. And after all the big domes have been laid in their quiet beds, and after all the great physiques have withered away little tired, old men, and after all the money has been devaluated until it isn’t worth as much as even it is now, the church of Jesus Christ will still march along driven by the winds of prayer, driven by the mighty gales of prayer from the hearts of men and women who are in touch with Deity.

Prayer again over leaps time and place. Peter couldn’t wait for the correct time. Peter was sinking in those waves. And if Peter had to consult a calendar to know whether it was time to pray or not, he’d have been 40 feet down before he could have got to the right day. But, Peter said, Lord, help me, and those three words had power in them all right, and God got him out. And there was Jonah. Jonah couldn’t even go to church and sit among the boys. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t listen to a choir. He couldn’t hear an exposition of the eighth chapter Romans. He couldn’t do it. Jonah was in the belly of the whale. And so, he cried out to God out of the belly of the whale and made up his own prayers; he went along and blew bubbles and slime and prayed. And God, from his prayer, made the whale so sick that God helped Jonah out of the belly of the whale and he went off preaching, what he should have done in the first place.

So, prayer overleaps, time and place. I’d hate to think that I could only pray in one place and in one position. And I’d hate to think I had to go to a certain locality to pray. Now I got to prod up to the church here three blocks, turn right one block, and then run up a corridor and get into a certain position before I can pray. Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing when the fellow is in a fix. That’d be awful, but it’s not so my brethren. Prayer overleaps time and place. You can pray up in an airplane. You can pray down in a submarine. You can pray on a hospital bed. You can pray in a school room. You can pray in a kitchen. You can pray anywhere. And you don’t have to do this. These little pictures we see, you know, the ones we have around on our bulletins, two little old reared up hands doing this. You don’t have to do that brother. Some people do their most powerful praying when they couldn’t get their hands together. A fellow fell down a well, he said, head first. And he said the greatest prayer he ever made in his life was standing on his head down there in that well. God heard him all right and got him out.

I heard of another man. I know that old brother. He was first converted and then he was filled with the Holy Ghost in the cab of a fast passenger train down in Georgia. That is dear old Fant, the ambassador on rails. Old Brother Fant, God bless him. He’s getting old but he’s still able to write me a letter occasionally telling me how he enjoys the Alliance Weekly and he wants me to know he’s for me, amen. Well, he believed in the coming of Christ, Brother Fant did, and he told the people down in a certain little town that he did and they believed the Lord was coming. And he said one of these days the Lord’s going to come and when He does, the dead in Christ will arise first and everybody living will be changed and be caught up with the Lord in the air. And he said, maybe I’ll even be taken out of my cab.

There was a little town down there where he used to preach sometimes off hours. And when Brother Dave would be coming into that town, he’d blow them a long salute. It wasn’t in the rule book, a long salute. In other words, praise the Lord friends, here goes Fant and his train would roar on through the little town. And one day the train roared through and it didn’t whistle. And the people of that little Georgia town got all excited and ran and out the back door across the yard to other people’s houses. They said, we wonder if it’s happened. I wonder if it’s happened. Maybe it’s happened. Brother Dave didn’t blow his whistle today. I wonder if the Lord’s taken him out of that cab? Well, that was Dave Fant. That was the man who could pray in a cab. And he didn’t do this. He had to keep his hand on the throttle so it wouldn’t wreck.

Now, I think I’ll have to close before I’m done, but say that prayer is a great leveler of men. The most illiterate person in the world can pray. And the most cultured person in the world can’t do any more than that. No matter how cultured you are friend, your clipped Oxford accent done in the best Shakespeare won’t make your prayers any dearer to God. And the most uncultured fellow in the world can pray just as well as the most learned. And there is no man alive, I don’t care if it’s the Queen of England, she being a woman, or the President of the United States, he being a man, I don’t care what human there is in the world, how high their exalted state, there is no man that can do a greater act than pray an effective prayer. The men whose names and pictures are on the front pages, are the great men of the world. The great men, Jesus said of the Gentiles, but, they cannot do a greater thing than pray. And the old man beside the track in Alabama, who gets his old battered Bible out and reads out loud and marks it with his fingers as he goes along painfully reading, for he only had a year or two in school. And then gets on his knees and looks up through the cracks of his poor shack and talks to God, he’s doing a greater deed than a prayerless president can do. He’s doing a greater act than a prayerless prime minister can do. And there isn’t a prayerless king in the world who is as great in the kingdom of God as that old man in the shack in Alabama.

Prayer is the great leveler Brother. In the presence of prayer there are no popes and bishops and pastors and doctors. In the presence of God there are no little men. In the presence of God there are no big man. In the presence of God there are only redeemed men! So, prayer is the greatest leveler in all the world. And when two men kneel down together, they’re all the same.

Down at the University of Illinois last year, year before last now, I had the happy experience of kneeling in prayer with different sorts of men. And I lost track of how great they were. When they were introduced to speak or lead in prayer, they gave them a build-up that long. And yet, I prayed with those men. I knelt down here, there was an old Alliance preacher and over here would be a Quaker missionary from Borneo and over here would be a Baptist missionary from Ecuador, and over here would be a president of a college and over there would be somebody else, but we didn’t know. Everybody was just everybody else. And the funny part about it was, you couldn’t tell when a man prayed whether he was a college president or just a little fellow like me. We all sounded alike in the presence of God.

But there’s more. Prayer is not only the greatest force in the universe, but that force is available to the children of God. Prayer makes old people young, and it makes young people wise beyond their years. I would rather trust to the wisdom of a praying man 25 years old than I would to the wisdom of a man 75 years old who didn’t pray. For I don’t think we ever ought to listen to any man that doesn’t first listen to God.

And the praying young man will have greater wisdom than the prayerless old man. But the praying old man will have the happy usefulness of a young man. I said to Brother Ray here the other day, it suddenly struck me for the first time, I said why is it that everywhere I go I mingle with young man. Why is it? Hardly an old fellow ever singles me out except to reminisce, and when he finds that I don’t go back quite as far as he thinks I do by looking at me, he gets disappointed and walks off. But in young fellows I have the time of my life. I wonder why. Could it be they are praying men, and really young men inside and you don’t know it? That a praying man stays young, and a praying young man gets old in experience and knowledge? I believe so.

And prayer robs adversity of its power and makes poor men rich and smooths the dying pillow. You know, one of these days you’re going to die. Isn’t that awful for a preacher to tell you that? Nobody talks like that in public. We all have a conspiracy of silence about this matter of death. Nobody wants to believe he’s going to die. But everybody’s going to die. You’re all going to stretch out and die. Some of you sooner than you’d ever dreamed. Do you know how well you’re going to die? I’ll tell you. You’re going to die just as well as you’ve prayed. No better, no worse, just as well as you’ve prayed. You’re smoothing your dying bed now. You’re making up your bed now Brother. My God, how awful it must be for those who live carelessly and pray little, and live out of prayer and then come to die and then have to try in the last frantic hour or hour and a half to pack into those few precious minutes what should have been a lifetime.

When Hayne rose and spoke for state rights back before the Civil War and in favor of the dissolution of the Union, he was a Southern orator. Daniel Webster was there and heard him. Daniel Webster said, tomorrow, I’ll answer him. And they said to him, Mr. Webster, do you think you can answer him tomorrow? Answer him, he said, I’ll grind him to bits. So, the next day he delivered that amazing, unbelievably wonderful and powerful oration called Webster’s reply to Hayne. And when he went in triumph out of the Senate chamber, somebody ran up and said, Mr. Webster, how in God’s world did you prepare an oration like that in 24 hours? He said, young man, that oration cost me 40 years. He could only rise in the hour of crisis to where he had been in the hours when there were no crises. And you can only rise in God as high in the hour of crises as you’ve lived in God when there was no crisis on. And if you want to have your dying pillow smooth, you’d better smooth it now while you can.

Now, I repeat again what dear old brother Tom told me at Beulah Beach. Here, he and I, I felt young in His presence and small, for Tommy tends to get a little round if he doesn’t watch it. And he’d had too many friends and they’d fed him too well, and he really was just a wee little bit pudgy. And I put my arm around his fat old Irish shoulders and he around my waist and we walked over the green sward together. He said, well, Brother Tozer, I’m leaving for Ireland on the 13th of September. He said, I’m going to take six months off. I’ve been talking too much. I’ve been talking too much. He said I’ve been talking more than I’ve been praying and it’s not doing me any good. He said, I’m going back home and I’m going to call a moratorium on talk. And I’m going to spend six months waiting on God. He said, you know why I am going to do it? I said, no, Tom, tell me. He said, I’m going to create a miniature mercy seat, a judgment seat of Christ, right here and now. And then he said this, Tom rarely talks but what he comes through with one of his penetrating jewels. And this was what he said. Brother, I want to know the worst about myself. He said, I want to know the worst about myself now while I can do something about it. We parted. I haven’t seen Tom. God will take him to heaven one of these days. He’ll walk off the end of a prayer plank and off into glory. But he wants to know the worst now. And prayer will do that for you. Prayer will gear you in. So, dying will be passing out of God’s left hand into God’s right hand. Praying, will be crossing the river from one side to the other side. The old lady said, God owns the land on both sides of the river. She doesn’t care which side she’s on.

And then, prayer keeps the dead saints alive and keeps them speaking. Old Milton wrote about the flowers that were born to blush unseen and waste their fragrance on the desert air. He talked about the jewels that the deep depths of ocean bear. But I think even the mighty Puritan was wrong. I don’t think there’s any child of God that ever needs to be a flower that’s born unseen, to waste its fragrance on the desert air. The praying saint doesn’t die. The praying saint lives on in his prayers. And the power of God comes to this place and that place long after a man is gone.

Listen to me friends, do you think God Almighty is blessing America today because we have a Republican administration? Do you think He’ll bless her more if we turn out the Republicans and put in the Democrats? No. God isn’t blessing America today because of anybody that’s in the White House or in Senate. God is blessing America today because, unseen by mortal eyes, but seen plainly by the eyes of God, there are little spirals and incense raising to the right hand of God from the holy graves were lie men and women who once thought and prayed and loved and sacrificed and suffered and died. Names unknown to fame and to fortune. They’re only a statistic, but they prayed and God put their prayers in his bottle. And they embalmed them and laid them away in the dark tombs and still, their prayers are rising to God.

Several years ago in a limited cemetery in West Virginia, I walked out in a cemetery where I think nobody has been buried for years. And there were the headstones, the old chipped headstones, you know the kind that flake off and they’re red and brown, they flake off and there was one lying there. And it said, Reverend, so and so, a preacher of the gospel in the Methodist society dating back a couple of hundred years. And I took off my hat and stood on that grave and raised my hand to God and prayed that something of the fire and power that was on the heart of that Methodist preacher might come on me. For back there, Methodist preachers were preachers, brethren. They were a man whose voices rang like trumpets all out over our blessed land. And they thought nothing of praying all night through. They thought nothing of spending whole days with God without a bite to eat. They thought nothing of gathering into little groups and praying for hours and days on end. They thought nothing of it in those days. They have died and their old tabernacles have fallen into dust. But the power of those prayers still hangs like a benediction over America. That’s why we can have juvenile delinquency and divorce and wickedness of every kind and politicians that can be bought and paid for and carried home in a sack. That’s why we can have the wickedness we’re having in this country now and still not fall apart yet. Not because of good men at the helm necessarily, though, I think we have good men. And I’d just like to say lest you misunderstand that I think Mr. Eisenhower’s one of them.

But good men at the helm is not what’s doing it only. It’s the unseen spirals of holy prayer rising to God like sweet incense from an altar. The world doesn’t see it as they flash by 85 miles an hour on their torsion level drive. They don’t know that lying there, the smoldering dust of men who spend hours and days and years with God. And God is blessing America from Atlantic to Pacific because once she was the repository of holy men and women who spake in prayer as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Prayer lets you live after you’re dead. Prayer lets your power continue when you being dead, yet speak.

And lastly, prayer gives you heaven at last. The old David Livingston over there in the heart of Africa, they found him kneeling in prayer. Oh, what a dramatic and beautiful end to an equally beautiful life. They found him kneeling in prayer. He had given his life for Africa, this medical doctor and the natives with a wisdom greater than we might suppose, tenderly laid the old tired body out. They went in with all of the gentleness of a mother, and took out his great silent heart, literally out of his bosom and sewed him up. And they buried his heart under a baobab tree. And then they carried his body through hostile tribes to the shores of Africa and shipped him to Westminster Abbey where everything lies but his heart. Wasn’t there poetic justice there. Wasn’t there a beautiful wisdom beyond their, their abilities that they buried his heart out there. And the heart of Livingston still prays, and the spirit of Livingston is with his Savior.

Now, I asked you three questions and I’m through. One is, do you pray? A man came in here this morning. God bless him, maybe he’s here tonight. He won’t mind by mentioning it. He said he heard me on the radio and I invited him to church so he thought he’d come. He said, I’m an Italian Jew. but I’m a believer in Jesus. I said, what’s your first name? He said, my first name is Abraham, but everybody calls me Eddie. I don’t know how they get Eddie for Abraham. So I said, alright, Eddie, I’ll remember you. God bless Eddie. He was a praying man. The reason I mentioned this, it comes to my mind, because he called me on the phone. And he said, Mr. Tozer, I’ve been a believer in Jesus for a long time, but I’ve never gone to church. I’ve been disappointed in what I have seen. And I said, will you come over to our church, will you? So, he came. God, you pray for Eddie will you, an Italian Jew, who prays at home and loves Jesus. I hope we won’t disappoint him here.

Well, do you pray? Do you pray as much as you used to? And, do you pray as much as you know you should. With those three questions I leave you.

Tags God, Prayer, Tozer

Messages

Tozer Talks

“Prepare By Prayer”

June 9, 1957

In the 26th chapter of the gospel as recorded by Matthew, verses 31 to 46, verses 31 to 46. I wonder if we couldn’t read that responsively too. So, we’d all have a part in it beginning with verse 31, of Matthew 26. And going down to an including verse 46, Matthew 26:31-46. Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples. Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me. And now the 41st verse, watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Now in the passage which we read and that which immediately precedes it and follows it, we have the record of the most critical event in the history of the world. I think there can be no doubt of that at all, that it had about it and upon it, more mighty historic significance. Greater human weight of wheel and woe than any other event, or series of events in the history of mankind. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of men, was about to be betrayed into the hands of sinners. He was about to offer His holy soul, to have poured out upon that soul, the accumulated putrefaction and moral filth of the whole race of men and then carry it to the tree and die there in agony and blood.

Now there was One present, the One most vitally concerned, who anticipated this crisis and prepared for it. That one of course was Jesus. And He prepared for it by the most effective preparation known in heaven or in earth, namely prayer. Our Lord prayed in the garden. Let us not pity our Lord, as some are inclined to do. Let us thank Him that He foresaw the crisis, and that He went to the place of power and the source of energy, and got himself ready for that event. And because He did this, He passed the cosmic crisis triumphantly.

And I say, cosmic crisis, because it had to do with more than this world. It had to do with more, even than the human race. It had to do with the entire cosmos, the whole wide universe. For the Lord was dying that all things might be united in Him, and that the heavens as well as the earth might be purged; and that new heavens and new earth might be established that could never pass away. And all of this rested upon the shoulders of the Son of God, here this night in the garden. And he got ready for this. I repeat in the most effective way known under the sun, and that is by going to God in prayer.

But over against that, were his disciples. They approached the crisis without anticipation. Partly they didn’t know, partly they didn’t care. Partly, they were too unspiritual to be concerned, and partly they were sleepy. So carelessly and prayerlessly and sleepily they allowed themselves to be carried by the rolling of the Wheel of Time into a crisis so vital, so significant, so portentous, that nothing like it has ever happened, I repeat, in the world, and never will happen again. And the result of their failure to anticipate was that one betrayed our Lord, one denied our Lord, all forsook our Lord, and all fled away.

And then Christ gave them here in the text read, Christ gave them these words as a sort of a little diamond set in this great ring. He said, watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation. For the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And this is what I want especially to talk about now. And I want you to know that this prayer that Jesus made that night in the garden, was an anticipatory prayer. That is, He prayed in anticipation of something that He knew it was coming in the will of God; and He got ready for it.

Now, this is what I want to emphasize and lay upon your conscience this morning, that you practice an anticipatory prayer, because battles are lost before they’re fought. You can write that line across your heart or across your memory, and the history of the world and biography will support it, that battles are always lost before they are fought.

It was true and is true of nations. It was true of France in the Second World War. There are those of us who date back, who were grown up at the time of the First World War, and we remember how the cry electrified the world, “they shall not pass” and pass they did not when France in her strength rose and opposed herself to the hordes of the Kaiser. But only twenty-five years and a little more, twenty-six at the most later, the hoards of Hitler came down, and France surrendered almost without firing a gun. And to this day, men don’t know why. Only last week I saw that some angry Frenchman has written a book, flailing his own country and lashing his people that they surrendered with scarcely a fight.

But why did they lose the battle? Why did France surrender? She surrendered because between the hour, her finest hour when she cried, they shall not pass, and her disgraceful surrender, she had gotten rotten and decayed; politically decayed and morally decayed, and spiritually decayed, and like an old tree filled with dry rot. When the tanks of Hitler came sweeping down like a stormy wind, France went down, and she’s never risen since. And she still manifested the same spirit in her politics and in her social life that caused her to lose the Second World War.

Now my friends, if that can be true of nations, and history will support it, it’s also true of pugilists. They say of fighting men, that they leave their victory in the nightclub. And while I’ve never seen a fight and I don’t attend them, they still do illustrate and Paul used these games to illustrate and so can I. They do illustrate the fact that a man to be at fighting peak must take care of himself. And when a man, has some have gained world acclaim and become very popular, they find themselves going to the nightclubs and drinking and staying up all night and sleepilly loafing in the day. And then there comes the time when they’re to fight again. And though they try desperately to get ready by what they call training, the night clubs have taken too much out of them.

So, they go into the ring and collapse in the fifth round, and people say how could it be that this might be, world beater should go down so disgracefully before a man who was not rated who wasn’t supposed to be good? The answer was not is, that he lost the fight before he went into the ring, not when they counted him out there on the floor face down and unconscious, but as he drank wine and stayed up and danced half the night or all of the night. He left his victory in the nightclub they say.

It was also true of Israel, up on a higher level. Back yonder in the Old Testament times, you will find that when Israel went in righteous and prayed up, she never lost a battle. But when she went in filled with iniquity and prayerlessly, she never won a battle. Israel never lost the battle the day she fought it and she never won a battle the day she fought. She always lost her battle when she worshipped the golden calf or sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play or when she intermarried with a nation or when she neglected the altar of Jehovah and raised up a heathen altar under some tree. It was then that Israel lost her battle.

And so, it was by anticipation you see. It was before it happened that she lost, and it was true the disciples here as I’ve already mentioned. They didn’t lose the day that in the morning when one of them cursed and said he was not a disciple and another one kissed Jesus and said, here’s the man go take Him. And when even John who loved Him forsook Him and fled, and they all sneaked away and melted into the night. That was not when the collapse came. The collapse had started the night before, when tired and weary, they lay down and slept instead of listening to the voice of their Savior and staying awake to pray. If they had stayed awake and prayed alongside of Him and heard His groans and seen His bloody sweat, it might have changed the history of the world, and certainly it would have changed their history.

But not only are battles lost before they’re fought, battles are also won before they’re fought. Look at David and Goliath. Everybody knows the story. We tell it to the children and the artists painted, and it’s got a place in the thought and literature of all the world. How little David, with his ruddy cheeks, went out and slew the mighty, roaring, breast-beating giant eleven feet tall and with a sword like a Weaver’s beam. And get, tiny, little, stripling David went out and with one stone lay him low and with his own great sword which David could hardly lift, cut off his head and carry that huge head by the hair, and display and lay it before shouting, triumphant Israel.

When did David win that battle? When did he win that fight? When he walked quietly out to meet that great, boasting giant? No! Let somebody else try it and the words of Goliath would have been proved true. Why, I’ll tear you to pieces and feed you to the birds, he said. And under other circumstances, he would have done just that. But David was a young man who knew God. And he had slain the lion and the bear. And he had taken his sheep as the very charge of the Almighty. And he had prayed and meditated and lay under the stars at night and talked to God. And had learned that when God sends a man, that man can conquer any enemy no matter how strong. And so, it was not that morning on the plain there, between the two hills that David won. It was all down the years to his boyhood when his mother taught him to pray, and he learned to know God for himself.

Then there was Jacob. Do you remember that after twenty years, he was to meet his angry brother who had threatened to kill him. He had never seen him. He had gotten away so that Esau couldn’t kill him. And now he was coming back. And the Lord revealed that the next day they would meet there on the plain beyond the river Jabbok. And the next day they met down on the plain, and they threw themselves into each other’s arms, and Esau forgave Jacob. And Jacob conquered his brother’s ire and his brother’s murderous intent. When did he do it? Did he do it that morning, when he walked out to meet his brother and crossed over the river? No. He did it the night before when he wrestled alone with his God. It was then he prepared himself to conquer Esau. Esau being the sulky, hairy man of the forest who had solemnly threatened by oath that he would slay Jacob when he found him. How could he cancel that oath? How could he violate the salty oath taken after the manner of the East? God Almighty took it out of his heart when Jacob wrestled alone by the river. Always it’s so. And Jacob conquered Esau the night before, not when they met, but the night before they met. And so it was with Elijah. Elijah defeated Ahab and Jezebel and all the prophets of Baal and brought victory and revival to Israel. And when did he do it? Did he do it that day on Carmal?

I counted as I sat here. Not that I wasn’t enjoying the service, for I certainly do enjoy every second of it, all the singing and all the rest. But I counted the words. Do you know how many words there were in Elijah’s prayer? After Baal all day long had prayed and leapt on the altar and cut themselves till they were bloody, then Elijah walked up at six o’clock in the evening, at the time of the going of the evening sacrifice. Elijah walked up and prayed a little prayer. Was it a prayer that took him twenty minutes as we sometimes do in prayer meeting and shut others out? Was it a long eloquent prayer though it was a blunt-read little prayer of exactly sixty-six words in English, and I would assume fewer in Hebrew.

So, there was your prayer. Did that prayer bring down the fire? Yes and no. Yes, because if it hadn’t been offered, there would have been no fire. No, because if Elijah hadn’t known God all back down the years and hadn’t stood before God during the long days and the months and years that preceded Carmel, that prayer would have collapsed by its own weight, and they’d have torn Elijah to pieces. So, it was not on Mount Carmel that Baal was defeated, it was in Mount Gilead. For remember that it was in Gilead, from Gilead that Elijah came. And I feel I am always a better man after reading this story. How that great, shaggy, hairy man dressed in this simple rustic garb of the peasant came down boldly, staring straight ahead, and without any court manners or any knowledge of how to talk or what to do, walked straight in smelling of the mountain and the field, and stood before the shrinking, timid, cowardly, henpecked Ahab, and said, I’m Elijah. I stand before Jehovah. And I’m just here to tell you there’ll be no rain until I say so. Goodbye. That was a dramatic moment, a terrible moment, a wonderful moment, but back of that were long years of standing before Jehovah. He didn’t know he was to be sent to the court of Ahab, but he had anticipated it by long prayers and weightings and meditations in the presence of his God.

Now, my brother, there are crises that wait for us out there, as there was a crisis that faced Jesus and His disciples, and David, and Israel and Daniel and Elijah and all the rest. There are crises that wait for us. I want to name a few of them briefly. One of them is acute trouble. Now, I hope it doesn’t come to you, but the history of the race shows that it comes to us all at some time. And when sharp trouble, with its shocking, weakening sting, comes to us, some Christians meet it unprepared. And of course, they collapse. But is it the trouble that brings the collapse? Yes. And no. It is the trouble that brings the collapse, in that, they wouldn’t have collapsed without the trouble. But it is not the trouble that causes them to collapse, because if they had anticipated it and prepared for it, they would not have collapsed. The man who goes down unto trouble, says the proverb, his strength is small. And his strength is small, because his prayers are few and lean. But the man whose prayers are many and strong, will not collapse when the trouble comes.

Then there’s temptation, temptation that comes unexpected and subtle, and it’s too unexpected and too subtle for the flesh. But anticipatory prayer gets the soul ready for whatever temptation there may be. Was it the day that David walked on the roof top that he fell into his disgraceful and tragic temptation? No, it was his long gap that the historians say was in between, and they don’t know what David was doing. I know one thing David wasn’t doing, he wasn’t waiting on his God. He wasn’t out lying, looking at the stars and saying, the heavens declare the glory of God. He did that. But that’s the time he wasn’t doing it. And so, David went down because the whole weight of his wasted weeks before, bore down upon him. So, temptation can’t hurt you if you have anticipated it by prayer. And temptation will certainly fail you if you have not.

And then there’s Satan’s attacks. Now Satan’s attacks are rarely anticipated because Satan’s too shrewd to be uniform. You see, if Satan established a pattern of attack, we’d soon catch on to his pattern. If I could go to the games to illustrate. I’ve never seen but one ball game in twenty years and no prize fight. But, if you allow me again, as Paul, to illustrate. If the devil were to be uniform and regular in his attacks, the human race would have found him out a long time ago, and poorest old church member would have known how to avoid him. But, because he is not uniform, but highly irregular and mixes things up, He’s deadly if we haven’t the shield of faith to protect ourselves.

Take the pitcher for instance, he doesn’t start throwing when the first inning begins and throw this same ball in the same place for nine innings. If he did, then the score would be 128 to nothing. But what does he do, he mixes them up, and the batter never knows where they’re going to appear. First up, then down and in and out and lo, then fast, then down the middle. He mixes them up. It is the absence of uniformity that makes the pitcher effective. And you think the devil isn’t as smart as dizzy Dean or Billy Pierce.

Do you think the devil doesn’t know that the way to win over the Christian is to fool him by irregularity. Never attack him twice the same way in the same day. Keep coming in from one side one time, another side, another side like the boxer. You think that boxer goes in there and gets himself rigidly stereotyped; he leads with his left, he strikes with his right, he moves back two steps, he moves forward two steps Why are the commonist stumble bum would win over a fighter like that. A fighter has to use his head too. And first, he attacks from one side, then from the other, then dashes in and backs away, then pedaled backward, and then then charges, and then it’s left and right then, feignt then, sidestep, and then weaves and bobbs, then; you know how to do it.

You won’t believe this, but I used to fight when I was a kid, a young fellow. You wouldn’t believe that would you? You’d think that anybody big enough to lift a boxing glove would be able to knock me down, but I was never knocked off my feet. I was too fast. And my brother, that’s the way to do it. The devil doesn’t come in always the same way. Every one of us, any of us could figure him out. But he will come at you today like a wild bull of Bashan, and tomorrow he’ll be as soft as Ferdinand. And the next day he won’t bother you at all. Then he’ll fight you three days in a row and let you alone for three weeks. Remember, it was said of Jesus after the three temptations, he left Him for a season. Why? To get the Lord to drop his guard, of course.

And so, the devil fights like a boxer. He pitches them in like a skilled pitcher. He uses strategy. Now, I say that’s why it’s pretty hard to anticipate; you don’t know what he’s going to do next. But you can always put a blanket anticipation down. You can always figure that the devil is after you. And so, by prayer and watching and waiting on God, you can be ready for his coming, when he does come, and you can win. Not the day he arrives but the day before he arrives. Not the noon he gets to you, but the morning before the noon. And the only way to win then consistently my brethren is to keep the blood on the doorpost. Keep the cloud and fire over you. And keep your fighting clothes on. And never allow a day to creep up on you. Never get up early in the morning and look at your clock and say I’ll miss my train and dash away. If you must dash away, take a New Testament along. Instead of reading the Tribune, read your New Testament on your way to work. Then, bow your head and talk to God. Get ready. I don’t recommend that. It’s too fast and too uncertain. But I say, rather than not pray at all, grab prayer somewhere in the morning. I met God in the morning when the day was at its best, said Cushman.

So, I recommend never let a day creep up on you. Never let Thursday floor you because you didn’t pray on Wednesday and never let Tuesday get you down because you were prayerless on Monday. And never let three o’clock in the afternoon floor you because you didn’t pray at seven in the morning. See to it that you get prayed up somewhere.

Now, I have 1-2-3-4 that are recommendations. And I’ve got eight minutes. That means two minutes apiece and I will turn you loose to go out into the sunshine and think over these things. But you want to take down these four little thoughts that I’m going to leave with you to close, the little conclusion. All sermons should have conclusions. Never act as if things were all right. Now, if the devil lets you alone a while and you’re not in much trouble and you’re reasonably happy and reasonably spiritual, you’re likely to develop a complex that says, well, things are all right, and you’ll neglect your prayer life and you don’t watch and pray.

Remember, as long as sin and the devil and disease and death are abroad in the land, like a virus, like a contagious disease, things are not all right. And you’re not living in a healthier, wholesome world, healthful world; a world that is geared to keep you spiritually healthy. This vile world is not a friend of grace to lead us on the God. It’s the opposite. So instead of assuming that things are all right, assume that they’re always wrong. And then prepare for them and anticipate them from whatever direction they come. That’s number one.

Number two is never trust the devil and say things are all right. The devil business is overdone and I won’t pray today. I’ll wait till Wednesday. Never trust the devil. Just as you can’t trust a communist, you can trust the devil, because it’s from the devil, the communists learn their techniques and get their psychology and justice. No statesman worthy of your vote or trust ever ought to trust a communist as long as he’s a communist. So, we never must trust the devil, never. Never imagine that he’s smiling. Never look at a picture of him by Dorre or somebody and say, oh, he’s not a bad looking devil. Perhaps all this is more or less, it’s like Santa Claus and Jack Frost. It’s only imaginary. Never trust the devil.

Always anticipate any possible attack by watching and praying, for the spirit though it’s willing, the flesh is terribly weak. Again, never become overconfident for the very reason I’ve stated that our Lord stated the flesh is weak. Never become over confident. Many a man has lost a fight from overconfidence. And many a businessman has lost a business because he was overconfident.

And fourth, never underestimate the power of prayer. Watch and pray said Jesus and He wasn’t talking poetry. Watch and pray said Jesus; and he practiced it. And won because he did practice it, and caught the spinning world that sin had thrown out of gear. Caught them in the web of His own love and redeemed them by the shedding of His own blood. He did it, I say, because He readied Himself for that awful event, and that glorious event, by prayer the night before. And by prayer in the mountains and other times, and by prayer down the years to his boyhood.

Never underestimate the power of prayer, and remember that without it, you cannot win, and with it, you cannot lose. Granted, of course that it’s true prayer and not saying of words. Granted your life is in harmony with your prayer. If you pray you cannot lose. And if you fail to pray, you cannot win. For the Lord gave us the example of anticipatory prayer, getting ready for any event by seeking the face of God in watchful prayer at regular times. Then no matter what happens, like Jesus Christ our Lord, like Daniel and Elijah and the rest, you can go triumphantly through, for prayer all the way wins.

Tags God, Prayer

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date May 9, 2021

“Faith, as Confidence in God”

Sunday evening, August 21, 1955

John 14:13, 14 & 1 John 5:14

Tonight, I want to read two verses from John 14 and then turn to John’s first epistle and read a passage. John 14:13 and 14, whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my Name, I will do it. Well, that’s what John records Jesus as having said. Then in 1 John, the same man is writing, but now writing out of Divine inspiration and writing in line with what our Lord said, these words, this is the confidence that we have In Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we asked, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.

You will note a similarity in the language, in the phrasing, in the emotional mood of the two passages. John was the author of the last one and he quoted our Lord as having spoken the first passage. So I want to talk tonight about faith as confidence in God. And this may have a familiar ring in as much as it will constitute my philosophy of faith, and it is of course among evangelicals a theme that we like to dwell on.

Now, John says that Jesus said that whatsoever we ask in His name, He would do. Then he says that we have this assurance, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us and if He hears us, we have the petition we desired of Him. Now, let me say this to begin, that there is a great deal of praying being done among us that doesn’t amount to anything, that is futile and never brings back anything to us. There is no good possible that can come with trying to cover this up or attempting to deny it. We will do a great lot better by admitting that there is enough prayer made any Sunday to save the whole world or four or five suburbs of the world. But the world isn’t saved. And much of our praying is simply an echo. The only thing that comes back to us is the echo of our own voice.

Now this has a very injurious effect upon the church of Christ. Not only injurious, but sometimes disastrous. There are about six things that unanswered prayer does in a congregation over an extended period. It tends to chill and discourages the praying people. If we continued to ask and ask and ask like a petulant child that doesn’t expect to get what it asks for, but continues to whine for it, we continue to do that and never get an answer. The temptation is that we will get chilled and cold inside of our hearts and get discouraged. And then it confirms the natural unbelief of the human heart for, remember this, the human heart by nature is filled with unbelief. It was unbelief that led to the first act of disobedience. Therefore, not disobedience, but unbelief was the first thing. While disobedience is the first recorded sin, back of the act of disobedience was the sin of unbelief, or the disobedience would never have taken place.

So, to pray and pray and have a church pray; pray for her sick and have them stay sick or die; pray for deliverance and never get it; pray for a thousand things and never see one of them brought to pass, I say the effect is to confirm the natural unbelief in the human breast.

And then, it encourages the idea that religion is unreal. And a great many people have the idea that religion is unreal. It is a subjective thing, purely, and there is nothing real about it. There is nothing to which you can be referred. If I use the word “horse,” everybody’s mind immediately jumps to a large animal with short hair and ears that stand-up, intelligence face, fast on its feet and powerful. Everybody knows what the word “horse” means because our English word “horse” has a reference, something to which the word refers. If I use the word “lake,” everybody thinks of a large body of water. If I use the word “star,” everybody thinks of a heavenly body. But we can use the word “faith” and belief in God and Heaven and all His works, and there is nothing to which it refers. They’re just words, like pixies and fairies and such things. And that encourages that false idea in our hearts when we pray and pray and pray and get no answers.

And then it gives plenty of occasion to the Enemy to blaspheme. The Enemy loves to blaspheme. He is a dirty-mouth, obscene blasphemer. I don’t like to abuse the Devil. I don’t like to even abuse the Devil, but I have a lot of secret sympathy though I wouldn’t myself use it. But I have a lot of secret sympathy for that rough old Irishman William Nicholson, who calls the Devil a dirty old pig. And he is just that, an obscene old pig. He loves to blaspheme, and if he can get a lot of Christians howling to the high heaven for weeks on end, and then see to it that they never get an answer. I don’t know what he says, but I know what he says has moral obscenity in it and he blasphemes God.

And worst of all practically is the enemy in possession of the field. The failure of a military drive when it wants fails, and worst part is not the men they lose. The worst part is not the face they lose. The worst part of the failure of a military drive is that it leaves the enemy in possession of the field. And when the people of God pray and pray and get nowhere, it leaves the enemy in possession of the field. My listening people, this is in itself a tragedy and a disaster. The Devil should be on the run. We should never see anything but the back of his neck. He should be always retreating and retreating and his worst fighting should be rear guard action. A scorched earth policy, burning and destroying as he goes, but always on the run.

Instead of that, the obscene and blasphemous Enemy, smugly and scornfully hold this position. The people of God let him have it, and as of course, retards the work of the Lord greatly. Having no prayers answered, having prayer sent up to having to come back empty. It is like sending an army out without weapons. It is like setting a pianist down to a piano without fingers. It is like sending a woodsman into the woods without an axe or is like sending a farmer into the field without a plow. And the work of God stands still.

Now, Jesus said anything we would ask in His name we could have it. John said, this is the confidence, the boldness, the assurance we have. I’m not adding words. Our English tongue is a very highly versatile, almost volatile tongue. We can say anything we want to say. It is the richest of all the languages because it has received tributaries from everywhere. But our difficulty is that sometimes we have to use a half dozen words to mean as much as one word means in another language. And so when the Holy Ghost said, this is the confidence we have in Him, that word confidence, our English word “confidence” is not enough, so the translators call it, this is boldness we have in Him. And others say this is the assurance we have in Him. So, it takes the word confidence, boldness and assurance to mean what God meant when he said this is that which we should feel toward him.

Now, right here comes a parting of the way between the man of faith and the man of unfaith. For the man of unfaith rejects flatly this kind of teaching; that this is the confidence, that we have in God that if we ask anything according to His will, He will give it to us. The man of unfaith says that can’t be so, and they will not accept it, and he demands the proof of human reason.

Now, we’re going to leave aside a little for the moment the fact that unbelief is a moral thing. That it is not a mental thing at all, but a moral thing. Unbelief is always sinful because it always presupposes

an immoral condition of the heart before it can exist. Faith is not the failure of the mind to grasp the truth; it is not a bad conclusion drawn from logical premises. It is not the failure or unsoundness of a logical premise. It is a moral sin. But we’ll leave that aside for a little bit and simply say that the man of unfaith cannot understand the language that I’m giving you now. This is the confidence that we have in God that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. If you will ask anything in my Name, I will do it. He says, I got to have a reason for this, but a man of faith feels confident. The man of faith does not dare or rest upon human reason.

I have wondered sometimes why somebody hasn’t come out and said that I have used reason to prove that reason was no good. But here’s what I have done, I have used reason to do what reason can do, viz. and namely, to show that there are things that reason cannot do. I have never been against human reason. But I have been against human reason trying to do things that human reason is not qualified to do. I once more say to you that the great difference today in the world is not between the liberal and the fundamentalist, but the great gulf fixed today is between the evangelical rationalist and the evangelical mystic. The one who believes God and disbelieves human reason, and the one who believes that things of God can be proved by and grasped by human reason. I may not live to see it, but some of you younger people will live to see that I was right in what I’m saying. We have evangelical rationalists that insist upon trying to reduce everything down to where it can be explained and proved. And the result is we have rationalized faith and we have pulled Almighty God down to the low level of human reason.

There are some things human reason cannot do. You can use human reason to discredit human reason. Anything that human reason can do, I’m for it. You have a can opener in your house and what woman doesn’t. You don’t use it to mend your little boy’s stocking. You use it to open cans. Your husband has a hammer and saw. He doesn’t use them to paper the wall of the living room. He uses it to cut boards and pound nails. Everything was created for a purpose. And I claim that there are some things human reason can’t do. Human reason and faith lie not contrary to each other, but one lies above the other. Faith, when we’re believers, we enter another world all together; a realm that is infinitely above “little Reason.” My thoughts are not your thoughts nor My way is your way. High as the heaven is above the earth, so great are the thoughts of God above the thoughts of man. Faith never goes contrary to reason. Faith simply ignores reason and rises above it. Reason could not tell us that Jesus Christ should be born in the Virgin Mary, but faith knows He was. Reason cannot prove that Jesus took upon Him the form of a man and died under the sins of the world, but faith knows that He did. Reason cannot prove that on the third day He rose from the dead, but faith knows that He did, for faith is an organ of knowledge.

You see, there are fundamental rationalists that say the human brain alone is an organ of knowledge. They forget there are at least two other organs of knowledge. Feeling is an organ of knowledge too. All the reason in the world couldn’t tell you the temperature was 98 today, but you felt that it was didn’t you? I did, even I can stand the heat like a lizard but I’ve had enough of this. I know that it was hot today. I have an organ of knowledge, feeling. A young man loves a young woman. How does he know it? Did he read the Encyclopedia Britannica and reason to it? No, he listened to the ticking of his own heart. He knows it by feeling. Feeling is an organ of knowledge, and reason is an organ of knowledge, and faith is an organ of knowledge and we’ve got to believe that. Reason cannot say Jesus rose from the dead. Faith knows He did. Reason cannot say He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, for reason doesn’t know, but faith knows that He did. Reason cannot say, He shall come to judge the quick and the dead, but faith knows that He’ll come. Reason cannot say my sins are all gone, but faith knows they’re gone. It’s all down the line, faith is an organ of reason and the man is an organ of knowledge.

And the man who believes he’s having knowledge that the man who merely thinks, can’t possibly have. Poor little old brains and come staggering along behind like a little boy trying to keep up with the Dad. Coming along on his little, short stubby legs trying to reason. That’s why in the New Testament the word “wonder” appears “and they wondered at Him and they wondered at Him and they all marveled. Faith was going ahead doing wonders and reason was coming along wide-eyed marveling. That’s always the way it should be, but nowadays we send reason a little ahead on a little, short legs and faith never follows. Nobody marvels because we can explain the whole business. I claim that a Christian is a miracle and then just the moment you can explain a Christian, you have no Christian left anymore.

Some of you may have read William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience.” I have read it two or three times. It’s helpful to me because I’m a man of faith. But William James did this, he tried to psychologize the wonders of God working in the human breast. But when the early disciples were on Solomon’s Porch in prayer and praise, people stood awestruck and joined themselves to them. And the real Christian is somebody that cannot be explained by human reason. Something happened that psychology cannot explain. And faith is the highest kind of reason after all. Or faith goes straight into the presence of God and goes behind the veil, for also our Lord Jesus Christ has gone, our Forerunner for us, and engages God Almighty and reaches that for which he was created, and communes with the source of his Being and loves the fountain of his life and prays to that One that begot him and knows that God that made Heaven and Earth. He may not be an astronomer, but he knows that God who made the stars. He may not be a physicist, but he knows the God who made mathematics. There may be many technical and local bits of knowledge he doesn’t have, but he knows the God of all knowledge and enters in past the veil into the Presence and stands hushed and wide-eyed and gazes and gazes and gazes upon the wonders of Diety. Faith takes him there. Reason cannot disprove anything that faith does, but reason can never do it.

Some of you, my dear friends, may have wondered why a few weeks ago, I sat down and took my pen in hand and wrote a tongue in cheek, half humorous, half ironic review of the book, “Prior Claim” because it is all going in the wrong direction. It is supporting the Bible by reason. It’s coming to the help of God Almighty by a few scientific facts. No, my Brethren, good men are doing it, better men than I, but they’re wrong. Not all the scientific facts ever assembled in any university of the world can support one spiritual fact, because you are in two different realms, two different worlds. One deals with reason, the other deals with faith. If the sun were to start rising in the West and go into the East, and if the Summer were to have no Fall but were suddenly plunged into Winter, and if the corn were to start growing down instead of up, and if the goony birds were all to start laying eggs and hatching puppies out of them, it wouldn’t change my mind about God or the Bible. For my faith in God is not dependent upon the support of scientific helps. We don’t even know if they have got their science straight in the first place.

Faith is an organ of knowledge. And, this is the confidence that we have in Him. Faith mounts up on its long, heavenly boots, up the mountain top, up toward the shining peak and says, if God says it, then I know it’s so. What? This is the confidence that we have in Him. Do you see, this is the confidence we have concerning Him.

Now you see, we’re dealing with Him. I don’t recommend we have faith in faith. There’s an awful lot of it going on these days; people have faith in faith. There are men going around preaching faith. No, I don’t preach faith, never, never did and so help me God, I’ll not start it now. I know better. Nobody ought to go around preaching faith. I’m not preaching faith tonight. The Bible says, this is the confidence that we have in Him. There’s the origin and source and foundation and resting place for all our faith. In that kingdom of faith, we’re dealing now with Him, with God Almighty, the One whose essential nature is holiness, the One who cannot lie, and the One before Whom goes faithfulness and truth. Faithfulness and truth I say go before Him. He can’t lie and we’re dealing with a Character, you see Brethren. Our confidence rises as the character of God becomes greater and more beautiful and more trustworthy.

Oh my, this thing of memorizing promises in order that we might have more faith. Now, I’m a memorizer. I’ve got a New Testament in cadence form and I have the Book of Psalms in long meter form, easy to memorize and I carry them around with me and memorize. So, I am a memorizer. I believe in it, strictly believe in it. But if we think that more verses will bring more faith, we’re on the wrong track. It won’t. Faith does not rest upon promises. Faith rests upon character. Faith rests upon the one who made the promise. It’s written of Abraham that he staggered not at the promises of God through unbelief, but waxed strong in faith giving glory to God. So, the glory went to God not to the promise. What’s the promise for? The promise is that I might know intelligently what to claim, and what direction to go, and what God planned for me, and what God will give me. Those are the promises. They’re the intelligent direction.

Suppose a man made a will. I was just thinking, if I made a will, all I would have to will to anybody would be some books, that’s it. Oh, there will be some household furniture, but not too much and not too expensive. There would be a few books, but that’d be it. I will to my so and so this book and it would be gone and that would be it. But suppose that I made a will and my heirs came in to listen to the reading of the will. And the Lawyer said, it says, I will to my son Lowell, a yacht in the Gulf of Mexico. I will do my son Stanley, a 100-acre estate in Florida. To my son Wendell, a uranium mine in Nevada. Everybody would say, well, the old men cracked up before he died. He doesn’t have a one of those things. He doesn’t own a one of them. He doesn’t have a toy sailboat from the ten-cent store. He doesn’t have a thing. He actually made a will with no character back of it. The old fellow had cracked up when he went. They would all smile and go out and say, well, that’s too bad. He was all right up to the time he made that will, but there was no character; nobody could make good on that will. But suppose some rich man makes a will. He dies and they call in the heirs and they read. It says, I will ten thousand dollars to this person. I will $100,000 to this one. I will $5,000 to this is my faithful servant. I will, so they say, it’s all right, he can make good. He’s a great businessman, a well-to-do man, a man that had the confidence of all the American business public. Everybody trusted him down to the last character you see. He makes the will in order that his heirs might know what they can claim. But his will is only as good as his character, and if he’s got no character or he’s as I pictured myself to be, penniless, then the will doesn’t mean a thing. I could promise a yacht, but I haven’t got a yacht. I could promise him an estate in Florida, but I don’t have an estate in Florida. I just have a duck that remembers me with a lot of gratitude. I fed ducks when I was down there. I sat on the bank and fed ducks the time you sent me down there to rest. But I have no property in Florida. How can I will what I don’t have.

So you see, Brethren, faith does not come from promises. Faith comes from confidence in God. For faith rests upon character, not upon promises. But the promises are as good as the character of the one who made the promise. So, when I read my Bible, I have a promise, this is the confidence we have in Him. If you ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if He hears us, we have the petition as a promise from God. Jesus said, whatsoever you shall ask in my Name I will give it. There’s a promise from God. How good is a promise? It’s as good as the one who made it. How good is that? Ah, this is the confidence we have, faith says, God is God, the Holy God who cannot lie, the God who is infinitely rich and can make good on all of His promises. The God who is infinitely honest and never cheated anybody. The God who is infinitely true and never told any lies. That’s how good a promise is that God made. It as good as God is, because God made it. But we push God off into the corner and use Him as an escape from Hell, and to help us when the baby’s sick. And then we go our way and then we try to pump up faith by reading promises. No, it won’t work Brother, it won’t work. This is the confidence that we have in Him, to glorify God by faith. It was God, not the promises, promises of course. We learn what God wants to do for us, we learn what to ask for. We learn what God has willed to us. We learn what we may claim as our heritage. We learn from the promises how we should pray. But faith always rests down upon the character of God.

Is that difficult to see friends? Why is nobody out in the whole world saying this? Why aren’t we saying that to our people? Why aren’t we telling our evangelical people once more, you’ve got to get to know God? You’ve got to get past making God a lifeboat to save you. You’ve got to get away from making God the ladder out of a burning building. You have to get away from the idea that God simply exists to help you run your business or fly your airplane; that God isn’t simply a water boy bringing you water while you have fun. God isn’t simply redcap carrying your suitcase and serving you. God is God. He made Heaven and Earth and holds the world in His hand and measures the dust of the earth in the balance; and the sky He spreads out like a mantel. And the Great God Almighty is not your servant. You’re his servant. He is your Father. You are His child. He sitteth in Heaven. You’re on earth. The angels veil their faces before the God who cannot lie.

I think it would be a wonderful thing that every preacher in America would begin to preach about God and nothing else for one solid year. Just one solid year, preach about God; who He is, His attributes, His perfection, His being, what kind of God He is, Why we dare to trust him? Why we can trust Him? Why we should trust him? Why we can love Him? Why we should love Him? Why would dare not fall short of loving Him. And keep on preaching God, God, the Triune God, and keep on until God filled the whole horizon and the whole world. Faith would spring up like grass for the watercourse. And let a man get up and preach a promise and the whole congregation would say, I can trust that one. Look who made it. Look who made it.

Now, this is the confidence Brethren. Confidence may be slow in coming, because you see, you and I have been brought up in a land of lies. David in his haste said, all men are liars, but I don’t read that he ever changed his mind when he cooled off. Because everybody is built alike. Don’t anybody get mad now and leave, because you’ll only come back sorry afterwards. Everybody has a deceitful heart and desperately wicked by nature. And we are brought up in a world of lies where lying is a fine art. Turn on the radio, and I’m not a betting man, but I buy you a soda if you can find an advertising program where the announcer can talk for 20 seconds without lying. Now listen to me. If there is a program anywhere that tells the exact truth, I don’t know where it is. Lying has become an art. They lie in pictures. They lie on the radio. They lie on billboards. They lie in magazines. They lie everywhere. And of course, we’ve got that psychology. We don’t have confidence in people. We’ve got the psychology of distrust. Reason tells us don’t trust them. Don’t trust them.

If a man were to come down to my house and offer me a $100 bill, I wouldn’t take it unless, of course, I knew the man. You won’t do that. But if I know you, I’ll take it. But no man can come a stranger and rap on my door and say, pardon me, I am giving $100 to some upstanding citizens your neighborhood. I’d say you don’t even know my name Mister. I’ve seen your kind before. Goodbye. One day I got a done. Somebody had done me. He said, you owe me such and such for a fountain pen which I sent to your house. I’d never gotten any fountain pen from him. I wrote him a little letter back. I never got the second one. It’s a racket. It’s a racket. A boy will come along and say, Good morning Mr. Tozer. He had asked the fellow next door what my name was, so he knows me. And I look at him. He’s young, about twenty-six, crew haircut and a smile that won’t come off. And I say what are you doing, selling magazines? Oh, I should not, selling magazines, I should say not. What gave you that idea? And after about 15 minutes conversation, you’ll find out he’s taking subscriptions from magazines to get through college, but they call it something else. You don’t believe a man who comes to your house unless he has a reputation that dates way back. You can believe the Fuller Brush man. He won’t steal your teeth before he leaves because he’s got a reputation to maintain. But for the most part, we live in a land of lies and deception. And we have a psychology of disbelief ground into us from our birth.

But when we enter the realm of the kingdom of God and the realm of faith, everything’s changed. Everything is different there. Never was there a lie told in Heaven. Never in the sweet kingdom of God did anybody deceive anybody else. And our own Bible is a book of absolute honesty. Jesus when he walked among men didn’t pull the trick the evangelists pull. Now raise your hand. Now put it down. Now go get him. Never any of that. The fellow, a couple of evangelists I heard one time, the Evangelist led the song leader out and stood him up. And he said, now my brother and co-worker, he said, he’s been away from his family a long time and this morning he got a letter from his wife and they all reached for their handkerchiefs and began to blow, very tenderly. He said, let me show you what he got and he pulled out what was in the letter, telephone bill due, the electric light bill due, gas light due. He said, back in his town, his little wife is keeping the home fires burning and he’s out here serving God. Now, let us all stand and pray that the Lord will send in the money to pay this fellow’s electric light and telephone and gas. I stood up but I didn’t pray ladies and gentlemen, I’m telling you that. No scoundrel will ever get me to pray.

You can’t, you can’t trust people much, but in the kingdom of God, nobody ever cheats you like that. Nobody ever goes down to some dear old lady with a mother complex, rubs back, I used to have a lot of hair, and says, You remind me of my dear old mother, will you pray? I need $500 to serve God and knows she has $500. And so, they pray tenderly and before he leaves, he gets her poor old check for $500. I have more respect for a man who would take a gun and go out and endanger his own life. Do you hear me? I’ve got more respect for the gunman who meets a man and says, give me your money or I’ll put a bullet through you. He doesn’t know but what a policeman around the corner will put a bullet through him. And he does it the hard, tough way. I have just as much respect for the man who robs with a gun as I do for that dirty cheat who takes advantage of a motherly, old woman and pray hypocritically, and yet, that’s being done. And I’m considered a cynic and a pessimist and a scoundrel for daring to say so. I’ll say it all right if it cuts my audience down to nobody but McAfee and my wife and the janitor. Because, if there’s anything, any old place where we ought to be honest, it’s in the church of God. Brother, what you hear from this pulpit you can believe. The ol’ boy may be wrong, but he’s honest. And if I know it, no man will ever stick his feet down here on this rug who isn’t honest. The cheat can’t get in gunshot of the church.

But the Bible always tells us the truth. It tells us David was a man after God’s own heart and then tells us David fell and committed adultery. We wouldn’t do that now. We smooth that over and leave that chapter out, but God put it in. It tells us Peter was an apostle of the Lord and that he cursed and swore and said, I never knew Him. It tells us that Paul was a man full of the Holy Ghost and turned on the high priest and said, you whited wall. They said, did you know that was the high priest? Oh, he said, I’m so sorry. The Apostle apologized, He said I was sanctified up to that moment, but I sort of lost it. Excuse me, I didn’t know he was the high priest.

The Bible always tells all the facts. It doesn’t tell you that if you’ll accept Christ, you’ll have peace of mind. It doesn’t tell you that you’re going to relax and go to bed and sleep twelve hours. It doesn’t tell you that you’re going to suddenly become successful and grow hair on your bald spot. It just tells you that you’ll have eternal life now and lots of trouble and hardships and thorns and cross bearing and glory in the world to come and eternity with God. And if you’re man enough to put up with the thorns and the crosses, and the hardships and the hostilities, you can have the crown, but you buy the crown by blood, sweat and tears. That’s what the Bible tells us.

This good, honest old Bible, no wonder they die with this beside their bed. No wonder they lay this on the breast of the saints when they lay them away. When I die, I want you to put a Bible on my breast, but don’t put a Scofield Bible on my breast, just the plain text King James Version. Amen? All right, now don’t come down and criticize me for saying that because it won’t do you a bit of good. I’ll laugh in your face. Well, amen.

Just this little word and then I’m finished. It’s three minutes to nine and I’ll be done at nine one.

In my Name, He says. What does that mean? Anything ye ask in my Name. It means ask according to His will. That’s where the promises come in. You’ve got to get those promises to know what His will is. Memorize them. Learn them. Get them into a part of your bloodstream, so you will have them on tap at any moment, fully counting on His merits. Ah, the merits of Jesus, they’re enough my Brethren, they’re enough. The merits of Jesus. We’re going to Heaven on the merits of Another. There’s no question about that. We’ll get in, because another One, went out. We live, because another One died. We will be with God, because another One was rejected from the presence of God in the horror and terror of Calvary. We’ll have the vision beatific because One hung with darkness around Him in six hours of agony. We go to Heaven on the merits of Another.

So, your faith rests down upon the character of God and the merits of the Son of God. And you don’t have to have a thing, not a thing, only your poor, miserable soul. And the more miserable you feel yourself to be, the nearer to the Kingdom you are. Somebody said as I quoted before, humanity is divided into two classes, the good who think they are bad and the bad who think they’re good. And the bad man who thinks he is good is shut out of God’s kingdom forever. But the good man in God’s kingdom is not much very likely to run around talking about how good he is. He’s more likely to say that he’s not worthy to be called an apostle. He’s the chiefest of sinners and an unworthy servant. God likes to hear that kind of language if it’s genuine. So, why come in humility depending upon the merits of another? If you pray and say, O Lord, I’ve been a good boy, answer my prayer. You’ll never get your prayer answered. If you pray saying, O God, for Jesus sake do it, you’ll get your prayer answered. If you come saying Lord, if you do this, I’m sure that I promise that I’ll do so and so, you’ll never get your prayer answered. If you throw yourself recklessly out upon God and make no reckless promises, but trust His character, trust Him, trust the merits of His Son. You have the petition that you ask of Him!

Why can’t we see wonders done in this day? Why can’t we? I don’t believe in wonders that are organized and incorporated, Miracles Incorporated. You can have it. You can have it. Healing Incorporated. You can have that. Evangelism Incorporated. You can have that. Vision Incorporated. Without a vision incorporate the people perish. You can have all that. Whenever we’ve got to get incorporated and get a letterhead and the president and secretary and have all that, God isn’t in it.

The man of faith can go alone into the wilderness and get on his knees and command Heaven. God’s in that. The man who dares to stand and let his preaching cost him something, God’s in that. The Christian who will put himself in a place where he must get the answer from God, he must get the answer from God, God’s in that; to live as Dr. Brown calls it, living hazardous.

Well, I believe in God, I will never be caught asking God to send me a trinket to play with. O Lord, do a miracle for me so I can write a tract. No, no. God is not going to send Santa Claus toys to His little saintlets. But if you’re in trouble and you have confidence in God, and you will go in the merits of His Son and ask Him and claim the promise, God won’t let you down. God will help you and get you out of your trouble. Do you know that?

I’ve had them come to me, although I don’t preach in a section of the city where I have more, too much, contact with criminals. I’ve had them come to me and tell me, Brother Tozer, I’ve been in prison and I ought to be in prison again. Now I’m converted, what do I do? And I say, go back and tell the authorities. But first, before you go, let’s ask God. And on one or two occasions, I’ve had God upset the police court and judges and all the rest and get that fellow out. Because he dared to believe that when he was in trouble, God would get him out of trouble if he would tell the truth. God is that kind of a God.

Dear old John Callahan, he is in heaven now. God bless his Irish memory. He was a scoundrel if ever one existed. He was a criminal and a rascal. John got converted in prison, and he got converted the old-fashioned way. He hadn’t dispensationized. He just got converted. So, finally they let him out.

He said the one thing bothered me and that was my mug shot. Do you know what a mug shot is any of you people? It is one of these shots that they keep on police records. You know, front view and profile and your number underneath and they kept that. The Governor pardoned John, but he still had his picture in the rogue’s gallery. And he said, I felt so humiliated about that. So he said, I called on God and I said, O God, please, I’m your child. Now, please get that picture out of the rogue’s gallery. So he said he was somewhere preaching and they met the Governor of the state. They sat and talked together at the banquet. And they got to talking about the pardon the Governor had given him and said, Governor, if you believe in me and you believe in God and you would like to set a crown on what God has done for me, would you do me a favor? He said, I’ll do my best. He said, would you get that picture out of the rogue’s gallery for me. He said, well, John, that’s a tough one. He said, that regulation. I don’t know what I can do. He said, a few days later, he got a yellow envelope without a stamp on it, saying $300 penalty for private use. You got him. You get him around March 15. And this one was from the Governor of the state, and there was very little in it except his rogue’s gallery picture. So, he said he put that in a drawer in his desk. And when he would eat with the Governor or talk with some big shot and sit down there and would say, John Callahan, you ate with the Governor. You’ve shaken hands with great men. He said whenever I’d feel that come over, he said, I’d reach down and get my rogue’s gallery picture out and say, John, there you are. That’s you and there’s where you still would be but for the grace of God. He said that always humbled him.

All the promises of God, Brethren. The merits of Jesus’ blood and the character of God. That’s the ground of our hope, not our goodness, not what we promised to do, and not what we have done. But what He promises us, and He can’t lie, through the merits of His Son. So, if you’re in any kind of trouble, why don’t you go to God and put Him to the test. Get on your knees and pray it through, pray it through. Would you do that? If you have trouble in your home; you’ve got trouble in your business; you’ve got trouble, real trouble. I don’t know. You know. Alright, go to God. Get down on your knees. Open your Bible. Say, God I hadn’t thought about it, but I can trust Thee. And then, look for the promises. Claim them. And Brother, God Almighty won’t let you down. God will move Heaven and Earth. God will make the river run backwards. God will make the iron swim. And God will help out his children if they will trust Him.

Tags Faith, God, Prayer, Tozer, Trust