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65A. Praying in the Spirit

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  speaker icon   1. Jesus Is All I Need   (3:36)
  speaker icon   2. Praying in the Spirit   (23:24)
  speaker icon   3. Longing for Jesus; Matthew 11:28-30   (3:55)

Selected Verses:

Romans 8:26-27.  Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. 27And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Opening:

I have wondered myself how it is that Pentecost has not discovered that Short and Easy Method of Prayer by Madame Guyon.  When I was brought in touch with the Faith Homes there, that was the great teaching.  And I found out it’s the great teaching of the Bible, of the New Testament.  In Revelation 12, the apostle is told to measure the temple of God and the altar—the holiest of all and them that worship therein, but the court is to be cast out; it is to be trodden under the foot of the Gentiles.  And we can easily discover what is meant by that.  But there’s the difference between the outward religion and the inward.  And the Lord has taught us very diligently what His will is.  This is the true inwardness called for in every Christian whether they ever heard about gifts or not, the Lord has said.

And there was a time when during my stay there at the Faith Home, God brought me into that place very powerfully.  And the first time I came to hear the word of God, He seemed to recognize immediately what had happened to me.  I had sought God, I wanted to know Jesus and the power of His resurrection, and I discovered that the only way to get there was by prayer, and that prayer could not be effective except it was prayer in the Holy Ghost.  And that’s the teaching of the New Testament on prayer.

Lord, teach us to pray.”  And He said, “Well, when you pray, don’t do like those in the outer court; don’t do like the scribes and Pharisees.  You’re sons of God.  Your job is to show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, in other words, to be the temple of the Living God, that God might come and dwell within you and perform His work, and bring about the glories and victories of His kingdom upon this earth.”  And that puts prayer where it belongs.

Selected Quotes:

speaker icon God has made this body so that it’s got to live in the air that surrounds me.  And God has made the new man so that he cannot live except by drawing in that life of God, by being filled moment by moment and controlled moment by moment by that God who has “beset me on all hands, who has laid His hand upon me,” “in whom we live and move and have our being.”  That’s prayer.  And so we bend our knees; our whole being is bowed all the time. 

And that’s what Madame Guyon brings out in her little treatise.  She says, “That prayer without ceasing is not a prayer of the lips, and it isn’t a prayer of the mind or of the thoughts.  It’s more than that: it’s a constant inward attention to this ‘King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God.’  It’s being united again like a drop of rain falling upon the ocean is united to the ocean so that you cannot say, ‘Here is the rain, and here is the ocean.’  It has all become one.  And so Jesus says, ‘That they all may be one as Thou, Father art in Me, and I in Thee.’” 

And how will I ever get there?  I won’t.  God’s got to draw me.  “Draw me; we will run after Thee.”

speaker iconWe know not what to pray for as we ought.”  As long as we do, we don’t pray like we ought.  But when we find out that “we don’t know how to pray as we ought,” and that awful majestic presence of God reveals itself to us, we will automatically bow our knees, and we’ll say, “O God, I know You’re offering to me things that I don’t grasp, that I don’t understand.  All my asking and all my thinking sink into the dust before Thy majesty.  Now, You take over, and You do it all.”

speaker icon God was able somehow to strip us and to empty us, and when we were thoroughly and perfectly empty, God began to fill us.  With what?  Why, with “all the fullness of God.”  That’s the great lack in the world.

speaker icon God is at last beginning to get some people into that sanctuary, into that Holiest of All.  Formerly, one of the mystics said, “If God has three in one generation that live like that, they ought to be regarded as prodigies of grace.”  But the Lord told me 30 years ago how many there were today.  There were a few more than three, but only a few.

speaker icon After all, heaven is your heart; your heart is the kingdom of God.  The kingdom of God will not be anywhere else but in your heart.  You and I will never know the kingdom of God until we allow the King to take His great power and to reign supreme.

speaker icon Do you know that Jesus Christ has been ready to come a long time ago, and that we—the ministers—have barred the door against Him?  I could tell you some mysteries that you haven’t dreamed of along that line.  And have you ever thought that maybe you’re the hindrance, “Maybe I am the hindrance”?

speaker iconOh, where is my Beloved?”  That, after all, must constitute my prayer; it must be that lovesickness for Jesus Christ that cannot be satisfied by any signs or wonders, by any entertainment—even spiritual entertainment—by absolutely nothing.  What does He mean when He says, “He sendeth them strong delusion”?  Who does that?  Why, the Bridegroom does.  He wants to sweep away these false souls that seek powers and seek gifts and seek great names and seek something to reflect credit on themselves.  But He is looking for those that seek to be despised and rejected, seek to be nothing that Jesus Christ might be “All and in all.”

Illustrations:

A minister who could not bring the people into the presence of God.  “The preacher got up, and he said, ‘Why, God is here! God is here!  God is here!’  It didn’t do anything for the people because he himself didn’t live like that.”    (from 15:17)

A pair of jealous organists at Patchen Avenue.  “They were so jealous one of another that sometimes neither showed up, because one thought, ‘If the other is there, I don’t want to be there.’ … And how we stumbled through our meetings!  And I was so glad, because it gave God a chance… Oh, when there’s nothing to look to but Jesus, isn’t that terrible!”    (from 18:22)

References: 

A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, by Madam Guyon.  The full compilation of books out of which this translation of Madam Guyon’s work is taken is available here.

Moment by Moment, a hymn by Daniel W. Whittle.

Moment by moment I’m kept in His love;
Moment by moment I’ve life from above;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine;
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.

Audio Quality: Fair

 
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Project Notes:

The original tape is marked (46).  We ran light hiss reduction, reduced the speed to 101.0% of the original duration, ran the DeHummer 4 filter, -30dB at 57.75Hz.

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Project Files:

The original media and project files are available upon request.


 
 
 
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