The Pastor's Prayer Life — Bill McLeod

The Pastor’s Prayer Life and the Pastor’s Role in Revival

The subject that's been a lot to me has to do with the pastor's prayer life, and so I'll stay basically with that and at the same time emphasize the place of the pastor in revival. I don't think most of us realize how important a place the pastor plays in revival.

We've noticed in churches that if the pastor holds back, the people normally hold back also. There are some exceptions to that, but mainly that's how it is. In the book of Revelation, chapters 2 and 3, I don't know what your interpretation of the angel of the church is.

I'm going to give you mine. Interestingly, recently discussing this with some brethren in Winnipeg, they felt strongly, as many people do, that these were literal angels and not earthly messengers, and we discussed it.

So I raised this thought, I said, now if these are actually angels from heaven, then you have enormous problems. Because in all seven cases, the message came, first of all, to the messenger of the church, and then filtered down from him, whoever he was, to the church.

And if actual angels are intended, then you have this problem, that you have angels that were sinning, whom God was calling to repentance, and that's impossible, in the nature of things that would be impossible.

Also you'd have another problem, and that is, who is the head of the church, this angel or Jesus Christ? And notice the language in Revelation chapter 2, the message to Thyatira, God said, unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira say.

So the angel is somebody living, residing in Thyatira. And God warned in the first message, the church at Ephesus, that unless this angel repented, he would remove his candlestick, the church. Now there's no evidence in the Bible that churches have guardian angels, and there's no evidence anywhere in the Bible that the time of probation for angels is still on, that is that angels can still sin.

Revival Begins With the Man of God

The problems are enormous if you adopt that particular view. I strongly feel the message was simply to the messenger of the church, and then from him down to the church. Years ago I read a book, it was written about 1927, and it was chronicling a great revival that occurred in Manitoba at the place called Norway House, which is up at the north end of Lake Winnipeg, Plague Green Lakes, and that's where the great Nelson River begins.

And the Indians there are Cree people. This man had been a missionary for some years there, and he was very discouraged because Indians would profess salvation, and then a week later they were back in all the old problems again, and he didn't know of one Indian convert that seemed to be a real Christian.

So he got very discouraged, and the book tells how he prayed and called on God to send revival to the Indians, and then a strange thing happened. One night he was revived, and immediately a revival broke among the Indians, a revival of such tremendous proportions.

Now this happened back about the time of the Welsh revival in England, 1904 -1905. The book was written in 1927, and the author said then that he didn't know of any Indians in northern Manitoba that were walking with God who were not converted in that revival.

It was a deep, powerful, lasting work of God. But it began with the man of God, the missionary. Well I read that years ago, and I thought to myself, now why in the world did it have to be that way? I mean, why does God have to start with a preacher?

The reason I didn't like the idea was because it meant that God might have to start with me, and I was sure I didn't have any needs, but not so sure at times. I kept it as well hidden as I possibly could from myself, and more especially so from others, for pride reasons.

When I began to pray for revival in Saskatoon, God began to revive me. And I would complain to the Lord about certain deacons that weren't, you know, what they should be, some long-tongued ladies in the church.

I had ladies with tongues so long they'd shoot them out the side window of the conures and windshield wipers, you know. And I used to pray, I actually prayed, Lord why don't you move them over to the Pentecostal church or the Alliance church or the Nazarene church, get them out of my hair.

And I wickedly assumed that because I couldn't help them, God couldn't help them, see. That's pride. Then we had a recession in the province. It began about two years before the revival, and in my opinion had a profound effect on the people and prepared us for revival.

We have a small population, the whole province has about a million people, slightly over a million now, it fluctuates a little bit up and down. At that time it was 940 ,000, and in one year, or a year and a half, we lost about 50 ,000 people, moved away from the province looking for jobs, and that year we lost almost 100 people from our church, and almost all of them were our best people.

And I couldn't understand that. I said, Lord, what about the stinkers? Why don't you move them on and leave us with these good people? But you know, the more I prayed that way, the more God kept saying to me, they're not the problem, you know.

You're the problem. I dismissed that. That must be my subconscious mind saying something's picked up, you know, some vibrations from the universe. Can't be from God. Because you see, I always preach lots of Bible.

Always preach lots of Bible. But the more I prayed, you know that verse that says, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you? Do you believe that, brethren? It's beautifully true. But notice the other half of the verse.

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. And then what does it say? Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Of course, a cold Christian would seize on the word sinner and say, well, of course, that means unconverted people.

Not necessarily so. Paul didn't say, I used to be the chief of sinners. He said, I am. There are two kinds of sinners, saved ones and lost ones. And so, I struggled with that. But as I sought to draw near to God, he began to talk to me about my sin.

Dealing With Hidden Pride and Self-Deception

I was a master at covering up my tracks, absolute master. And didn't realize I was doing it until a fellow pastor suggested to me one day that I was a master at covering up my tracks. I'm not referring to immorality, but to other subtleties in which I was guilty.

For example, if somebody left my church and went to the Alliance Church, I immediately had to find a good reason why they left. It couldn't be because they found the grass greener there. That was impossible.

I mean, considering all the Bible I preached. So I would handle it this way. I'd say to my people, if somebody asked, they would say, well, they're church hoppers. You know, they hopped around before they came to our church.

They'd be hopping around. Now, they won't stay in that church long either. They're church hoppers. Or I would say, they're good Christians, but, she's a good Christian, but, you know, and someone said that only billy goats, but.

I was doing it all the time. And then another thing. If God used me in winning some people to the Lord or in helping people to a significant victory and somebody else got credit for it, it just about killed me.

I would have to find some very subtle ways to clue the people in as I would rationalize it in the interest of truth. You see, but that wasn't the real problem. It was a pride thing and God had to deal with that.

And there were many areas of my life that God had to deal with. And dear man, I went for two years. I went through hell on earth. Because I was so stubborn, resisting, resisting, particularly resisting the finger of God, which was pointed at my heart.

I blame my wife sometimes to God. She doesn't talk. People come and say, your wife doesn't talk to me. I talk to them, well, I'm not aware of that. Then what do you say? But I really wanted revival. I wanted it with all my heart.

And I began to deal with these things one after another. Then I struggled greatly with this whole thing of Galatians 2 .20. I read Maxwell's book called Born Crucified and that helped me to see there was such a thing.

But I couldn't somehow get into it. I tried and tried. I had to be on the cross when I preached on Sunday to make sure I could fly high on Sunday, knowing full well that Monday or Tuesday I'd fall off the cross.

Well, then I had to get quickly back up on the cross for Wednesday night, knowing I'd fall off Friday or Saturday, but I had to get back up on Saturday for Sunday. It was a vicious circle, and I hated it.

Reckoning the Believer Dead With Christ

How do you handle it? Well, one night about three months before the revival, I saw it in Romans 6, that it was actually a once-and-for-all faith thing. Here's what it said. In that he died, that's Christ, he died unto sin once, once, once.

But in that he lives, he lives unto God. The first word of the next verse is the word likewise, which means after the same fashion or in exactly the same manner, reckon. Now reckon has the word, the Greek word, there has many English equivalents in the New Testament.

Words like esteem and count and account and think and believe and impute, they're all translated from the same word. So reckon, believe, esteem, count, account, consider. Reckon you also yourself. And then it dawned on me, if Paul had been writing to one person, he would have said, Reckon you also yourself.

To be dead indeed unto sin. Now that wasn't my current experience, but really had nothing to do with my current experience. It had to do with the truth of God. Reckon yourself, he said, to be what I declare you to be.

Romans 6 .1 said, knowing this, 6 .6 .1 said, knowing this, that our old man is crucified. I was trying so hard to be crucified. God said it's done. I was trying so hard to die. And Colossians 3 .3 said you are dead.

So that night, in a once and for all way, I reckoned myself to be what God said I was. And I did it in a total once and for all way. There are five things in the New Testament that were told happens to us.

Crucified with Christ, dead with Christ, buried with Christ, risen with Christ. It even says we are ascended with Christ. And I accepted the whole package by an act of faith once and for all. To live now eternally to the glory of God.

And the Lord showed me this reckoning thing, you know, through something in the gospel of Luke, the ten lepers. They were Jews and Samaritans. They all had the first five books of Moses, even if they didn't get along.

And they knew the law of God said if you had leprosy and you thought you were healed, the evidence was there that leprosy was gone. Then you were to present yourself to the priest for inspection. He would shave off your hair, put you outside the camp for seven days, re-inspect you.

And then he would pronounce you clean or unclean as the case might be. When the ten lepers met Christ, he didn't heal them. He didn't touch them. They were far off and he cried back to them and said, because they'd cried to him, Jesus master, have mercy on us.

And he cried back to them and said, go, show yourselves to the priest. Now, brethren, they could have stood in a circle and rationalized themselves out of the blessing of God by saying, you've got it, you've got it, you've got it, we've all got it.

The law says if you're healed, you see the priest. None of us are healed. How can we do this? But they didn't make that mistake. So they went to see the priest and it says in the account in Luke, and it came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed.

Not when they were standing still. The obedience of faith. And in 2 Thessalonians 1, Paul prayed three things. One of them was this, that God would fulfill the work, not the act, the work of faith with power.

And he did it for them. And that's how far my faith has to go. What things, whoever you desire when you pray, believe that you receive, it's in the past tense, actually, believe that you receive them and you shall have them.

That's how far my faith must go. So my faith went that far because God is the God who calls the things that be not as though they were. I had a pastor friend. He served down in North Dakota, I believe it was, Park River, years ago.

Then took a church in Washington. He told me later on, it was an independent Baptist church. He said it was the worst, absolutely, positively the worst church he'd ever seen or heard about, but he didn't know until he got there, you know.

They'd have a business meeting, there would be a fight every time. He said, I used to go home from business meetings and throw myself across the bed and I'd cry until I never had a tear left in my head.

And my wife would sit there and she would say, oh, brother, it's not that bad. He said, honey, you don't know the whole story. It's worse. And this went on for several years. They had deacons that weren't saved.

They had church leaders that were committing adultery, church members getting drunk, fighting and scrapping, reduced to about 80 people. Then he heard about revival in Canada and he hopped a plane with his wife and flew up to Winnipeg.

Personal Revival Requires Honesty Before God

He came up to me after one of the meetings, said, brother Bill, we'd met some years before. We shook hands and talked a little bit and he told me where he was. Then he said, can you give me a simple, simple, uncomplicated plan for personal revival?

I said, I can. So he got his notebook and a pen. Give it to me. I said, well, before I give you this, there's something else you must know. He said, what's that? I said, would you, would you begin by praying this prayer and saying, God, show me myself, show me what I look like to you.

I said, you know how bad the church is. What about you? Ask God to show you. That rolls out of my own experience. You see, two nights later, he came to me after the meeting, said, Bill, this is absolutely horrible.

I said, what is? He said, seeing yourself. Oh, he said, it's, it's terrible. You know, I said, you're going to do anything about it? He said, no, I'm not. And there was a chair right there. And I said, well, do you know what the alternative is?

He said, what is it? I said, the alternative is you get honest and get out of the ministry, because if you're not prepared to deal with these things as an honest person, you can't stay in the ministry.

And he saw the chair and he fell at the chair and he started to pray. But the prayer went like this. Oh, God, help me. God, help my church. You know, the mess we're in. God, help me. And I stopped him.

I would never stop a person when they were praying before revival. I learned that from Soteros. If they're not praying right, stop them. So I stopped and said, Brother Roy, God doesn't want to help you.

He wants to kill you. And you know, he opened his eyes and stared at me. And he said, oh, Brother Bill, he said, that was a shaft from God. I'll tell you, he prayed differently afterwards. They stayed five days.

They went home to Marysville. He began preaching Galatians 2 .20 and the message of revival. And a revival broke in his church. I was there about four years ago. They were up to about 600 people. There isn't a week.

Week goes by where people aren't saved. They've reached all kinds of sinners, but nothing happened until a pastor was right. See, cry, pray all you want to pray. I stand in the way. Myself, of myself and my ministry.

Another pastor flew up from Portland, Oregon. He was a Canadian ministering in Portland. He'd heard about revival in Canada and his brother had been touched in Saskatoon because he pastored a church in Saskatoon.

But if you compared those two brothers, the pastor in Saskatoon, he really couldn't do it the way his brother could down in Portland. I mean, Richard could really wind out the words. And he had administrative ability, a much larger church and all this kind of thing.

And when he heard about revival in Canada, he invited his brother down to his church and his brother went down there and about 30 people experienced revival. But most of the church wasn't touched, but about 30 people.

But Richard himself wasn't touched at all. And he couldn't understand it. And then his brother, he couldn't understand his brother. He told me later on, he said, you know, I take him golfing. And he'd lean on the golf club and talk about Jesus.

That's all he would do. I couldn't believe it was my brother. Then he got so hungry for revival, he discussed it with the board. And the board said, listen, we'll pay the shot. You fly anywhere in Canada you want, we'll pay the bill.

And don't come home till you get revived. So he showed up in Winnipeg. We went on for five weeks in Winnipeg, you know. And he came to me after one of the meetings. And he told me why he was there. And it was a good thing we got together because he and I had some things between us that needed to be cleared out.

We got them cleared out. And then I let him in the three steps of renewal. Deal with sin, deal with self, deal with the spirit. And you know, when we got to our feet, he said, brother Bill, I don't feel the slightest bit different than I did before I knelt.

But when I knelt at that chair, I meant every word of it. And I gave God everything there is of me. And he went home to his church, started to preach the message. And a revival broke. And they had to go for 11 weeks.

Meetings every night, 11 weeks. They prayed with about 3 ,000 people before the movement subsided. It became known as the Portland Story. It was published. They started a revival center in that particular state.

Again, God couldn't do it in the church until he did it in the pastor. And could add another thought, I cannot, as a pastor or Christian worker, have an effective prayer ministry until I myself am right with God.

Prayer, Renewal, and the Spirit of Supplication

Proverbs 1 .23 puts it this way. God said, you turn at my reproof. And he promises two things if we return. He says, I will pour out my spirit unto you. I will make known my words unto you. The Bible will have new meaning.

It'll come alive to my heart. And the spirit of God will be poured on me. And when the spirit of God is poured on a Christian, he learns how to pray. Because in Zechariah chapter 12, God said he would pour on his people the spirit of grace and supplications.

Literally, the spirit of grace to supplicate. And that's what happens. In revival, a Nazarene pastor flew to Saskatoon. Interesting story there. He came because he wanted revival. It's very strange that a Nazarene should come to a Baptist looking for revival.

I mean, the Nazarenes have a revival message. But he heard of what was happening in Saskatoon, and he hopped a plane. But before he hopped a plane, something had to happen. He'd drawn a ticket to shoot an elk.

And he desperately needed that meat, because he was on a small salary. So he bargained with the Lord and said, Lord, I'm going hunting tomorrow morning. That was Saturday. Now you get me an elk first thing in the morning so I can catch the plane out of Calgary and get to Saskatoon so I can be there Sunday morning.

He drove to the bush, stopped the car, got out of the car, loaded the gun, and an elk walked out of the bush and looked at him. And he shot the thing and drafted out, threw it in the car, drove home, was on the plane, arrived in Saskatoon.

He was in the Sunday morning service. We didn't know a thing about him, you know. We didn't know he was there or a thing about him. He just got up, introduced himself, and said, Could you brethren pray for me?

My heart is so empty. So I asked some of our men to take him off into my office, and they did. And they counseled, and they prayed with him. And he met the Lord. I had meetings in his church several years later, and he told me that for months after God touched him in Saskatoon, every place he went, there was a touch of revival.

But again, you see, God had to touch him before God could do things through him. We wish it were different than that. I used to wish it was different than that. But if there's mud in the pipes, I'm responsible for that.

If there's a frog stuck in the pipe, I'm likely the frog. And God has to deal with that. But we like to blame our wives or our deacons or elders or people in the church, anything we can blame, just so nobody will think there's anything wrong with us.

And that's what I did. If you want to know how to do it, I'd be glad to tell you how to do it. But I'll tell you this, it'll never work. God will never be satisfied with that. And I simply have to tell God I'm a mess.

I'm a bag of garbage, I told God that many times. I invited the Lord and I really meant it. I said, God, why don't you dig a hole and throw me in and cover me over and forget that I ever lived. And sometimes I use language stronger than garbage, because I felt that.

This rotten self, horrible. And God's remedy is the cross. The Lord sought to slay Moses, and he seeks to slay you and me. To bring us to nothing, so then the Lord can work through us. And when he does, he will get the glory.

I won't take the glory. You know, after God worked in my heart this way, the Lord said to me one day, could you stand it if somebody else got credit for something I did through you? I said, sure. I said, Lord, the flesh would really scream, but let it scream.

The very next night I was in a home and they got talking about a family I led to Christ. And somebody said, wasn't it beautiful the way Brother Schmidt led those people to Christ? And I just looked at the Lord and I just smiled.

I almost said, you rascal. I didn't say that. I was just grinning away at the Lord, you know. And recently, recently, twice within a week, the same thing happened. And I was just so glad to be able to praise the Lord, to praise the Lord.

Every place I go to hold meetings, I pray. I say, Lord, let them forget me, but not forget you. That their faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. And I pray constantly, oh, that people would hear the voice of Jesus.

That's where the word of the King is. There is power. I don't have any. Power belongs unto God. I can be a channel for that, but I can't claim it. I can't hold on to it, even if I wanted to. I remember another pastor.

He was pastoring in Regina and he flew to Winnipeg. Now, satyrs were holding meetings in Regina, so I asked him, why did you come to Winnipeg? He said, Brother Bill, there's all kinds of junk that I have to make right in Winnipeg, so I came here to make them right.

And he did. Went back to his church in Regina. Eventually wound up with double services Sunday morning. He flew over church. I mean, it almost coughed its last when he got there. And God did something in his heart and then through him and that church.

And it just goes on and on and on. But dear people, it starts with you. And it starts with me. I was in a church in Yorkton. The pastor, after about a week of meetings, he went to the pulpit. I didn't know what he had in mind.

Confession, Forgiveness, and Restored Church Life

And he must have wept for 10 minutes as he talked to the people. And asked them to forgive him for being such an unfeeling clod. See, here's what happened. Many of his people were coming to him and say, Pastor, I had this against you.

Could you forgive me? Pastor, I had that against you. Could you forgive me? He said, after about 15 people came, it dawned on me that I was the problem. So I asked God to show me what the matter, what was wrong with me.

And he said, Dear people, the pride that God showed me in my heart. And the fact that I never really loved you. You were my meal ticket. But I didn't love you. And he begged that congregation to forgive him.

And they did. And what a glorious time after that. You know, he contacted me several months later and he said, you know, they don't even need a pastor anymore. Every committee in the church is humming at 100 efficiency.

I don't even have to be there anymore. Wouldn't it be nice to have a church like that? You know, in my church in Saskatoon, the deacon's board constituted the nominations committee. And so before the annual meeting, I would meet with the committee.

We'd find out how things were going. We had about 75 offices. Was it that? I forget now altogether to fill. I don't remember exactly how many. Probably not that many. But anyway, how's it going? Terrible pastor.

Just terrible. Do you know what the people were saying? Look, I'll tell you what. If you absolutely, positively can't get anyone three days before the annual meeting, I'll possibly consider taking it on.

That's what they were telling the nominations committee. It's terrible. After the revival, three or four months after the revival, I had an annual meeting. The chairman of the committee said, my phone is just about burnt off the wall with people phoning, offering themselves for any job in the church.

Anything at all. Anything, anything, anything. So what made the big difference? Remember I shared with you earlier today that everybody stayed home and prayed. Nobody showed up to evangelize. After the revival, one Sunday morning, I gave slips to our people.

They didn't have to sign their names. Pardon me, I'm getting mixed up with something else here. But I did give them slips. They did sign their name. And it was just one thing on the slip. Would you like to get involved immediately in house to house evangelism?

I had almost 50 names and they really meant it. I wish Gordon Bailey could be here. God touched his life. He was our head usher. Had never tried to win a soul to Christ in his life. Christian six years, always in church.

He and his wife. He got up in one of the meetings and asked for prayer. A group of us prayed for him. He went home, got his wife and his kids and set them down in chairs. And he said, it was the hardest thing I ever did in all my life.

Some of us might have to do the same. I asked my wife and children to forgive me for the poor kind of Christian I've been. The poor testimony I've been before them. He said, I felt good about it afterwards, but I didn't feel anything particularly great.

They lived on an acreage. Well, I had 250 acres and a small herd of black Angus cattle. He went out to the barn that same night. I've never asked him for details. I've heard him say this in men's meetings, numbers of times.

Suddenly while I was shoveling manure in the barn, God, the Lord filled me full of the Holy Spirit. In the next nine months, he and his wife led 30 people to Christ. They started to work on a Sioux Indian village south of Saskatoon.

They led about 35 Indians to Christ. They got a permanent work going on the reserve. Two years ago, he was preaching in churches across Western Canada every Sunday in that year, except for three Sundays.

Six or seven groups have asked him to come on staff full time to work in the area of evangelism. He doesn't want to lose his non-professional status. Now he's not a pastor. I know one church has been after him three times to become their pastor.

He says, I don't want to lose my non-professional status. He's a cattle inspector. As a cattle inspector, he's rubbing shoulders with men all the time. And he loves it. A while ago, he spoke at a gathering of cowboys, an international gathering.

There's 1 ,500 or 2 ,000 people there. Gordon Bailey was the speaker. He gave a gospel message, an invitation. And the counseling room was so packed with sinners, they couldn't get them all in. A while ago, they asked him to speak to a group of ranchers in Alberta.

Each rancher had to bring an unconverted rancher friend. I think, if I remember rightly, there was 50 ranchers showed up. Was that 50 with another 50? I'm not even sure. Gordon Priest gave an invitation.

12 ranchers got saved. Why do I mention this? Because Gordon shared something with me one time that I want to share with you. He said, if my heart is right with my wife and everybody, anybody else, every time I preach, God works.

But if there's anything wrong between myself and my wife, it's a fizzle. Nothing happens. And it's important to know that. The channels have to be clear and clean, especially with those closest to us.

But with anybody where there's a problem. And don't say, as people sometimes say, you don't know what happened. I don't have to know what happened. I know what happened to one person when she was 12 years old.

Her father and seven or eight drunken friends of his gang raped her. And then this kept on until she was almost 18 when she was able to escape from her home. Sometimes when her father wasn't home, a bunch of these drunken wretches would come and gang rape her.

When I met her, she was 35 years old. She'd married, but she didn't know how to respond to her husband. Because she was so, in her thinking, in her mind, she was so fouled up. But she wanted to be right, but she hated those men with a passion.

And all I can say is this, to the glory of God, when she walked out of that counseling room, she had forgiven her father. She had forgiven those men. She was so filled with the love of God. It was just radiating out of the woman.

Now, if God could do that for her, He can do anything for anybody here, whatever the need might be. So the Lord is saying, unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thy power. Let it filter down from yourself to the church.

But first of all, it must come to me. I don't know if I shared this here or not, but I remember one time I came home from crusade. I had some tapes of my messages. I decided to listen to myself. About halfway through the tape, I came under deep conviction after listening to myself that some of the things I was telling those people to do, I was really not doing myself.

I turned the thing off. I knelt there and wept before God and asked His forgiveness, that I was such a hypocrite as that. And God took it out of my heart. So people, it goes on and on and on. But God can do this.

God Uses Clean Hearts, Not Clever People

We don't have to have a lot of degrees after our name. Gordon Bailey only has grade eight education and no theological training at all. I heard somebody once say, we have made the awful mistake of thinking that God is looking for a lot of clever people that He can use, and He isn't.

He's looking for some clean people He can use. So you don't have to be clever, but you do have to be clean. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. He that loves pureness of heart and has grace in his lips, the King shall be his friend.

Do you love pureness of heart? Because it would mean a radical change in our heart. I was with an organization in the States, one-time Christian organization. One of their head men, he was a lay person.

He had his own business, a five million dollar business. And he said, like I used an illustration. I said, you know, sometimes some people are so polluted in their mind, if they see a cardboard box rolling before the wind in the field or a rusty tin can down in the ditch, they look at it, they have to think evil.

He said, when you said that, you were talking about me. I am that polluted. I hate it. He said, Brother Bill, do you think you could prepare a message on the text, Blessed are the pure in heart, just for our organization?

I said, I'm glad to. And there came the day, 25, 30 people there afterwards and said, Brother Bill, God did it. He gave me a pure heart. And, you know, basically a pure heart is a purified heart. The words of the Lord are pure words as silver purified in the furnace of earth.

Tried in the furnace of earth, purified seven times. They're pure equals purified. A pure life then will be the natural result of a crucified heart, crucified and resurrected with Jesus. The result of a life that's filled with the Holy Spirit.

A Pure Heart Produces a Spirit-Filled Prayer Life

And before I close, I'll illustrate that from a pastor in the States, a Nazarene pastor. I preached in his church on a Sunday morning. I was holding meetings in a church in the area down in Idaho. And he came forward and his assistant pastor and the organist and the pianist and the Sunday school super, seemed to be leaders in the church, came forward that morning, Sunday, Thursday, he phoned me long distance.