Prayer - Fellowship With God — Bill McLeod

The Limits of Political and Ecclesial Power

Many years ago, there was a book entitled Social Purposes for Canada. Each chapter was written by a different person. One chapter was written by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. And this book was outlining how they could socialize Canada, make it a social nation.

You know what the plan was? Here's what they said. We can't socialize Canada as long as Canada is strong and united. We must balkanize Canada before we can socialize Canada. That was the plan. And Trudeau worked at it.

You know, when he was giving millions of dollars to various groups in Canada, he wasn't doing it from the right motive. His motive was to socialize Canada. And that's really what went on. The average Canadian doesn't know that.

I heard about this book, got it at a library, and read it. And I was shocked to see what the plan was and how they're working this plan. Balkanize Canada. Split it into small groups. Then they said we can socialize these small groups one by one and eventually get the whole country.

This was the plan. Every time I think of it, I get mad. You can't preach if you're mad. By the way, did you know that about 90 of the evangelical churches in North America have less than 100 members?

You hear all about the big churches, what they're doing. You know, Akron Baptist Temple, 22 ,000 members. And other churches, Jerry Falwell, I think 35 ,000. I was in Jack Harrell's church one time with Gordon Bailey.

And we asked one of the guys who was showing us around how many members they had. He said 95 ,000. Well, that's the biggest church in America. I think they've got up to 140 ,000 members in this one church.

They have to have staggered services. So this is what you hear about, all these big churches, you know. But you put them all together, there's not nearly as many people as there is in all these smaller churches that God is blessing around the country.

In Winnipeg where I am, there's some large churches and one of them is telling the world God is bypassing small churches. Come where the action is. We've got all the wealthy Christians in our congregation.

They're bragging, you know. This kind of stuff, you know. You know, it stinks in God's nostrils. But that's what's going on. Some of you who probably heard me tell a short story about Dr. Nesdoni, Sam Nesdoni.

Does anybody remember that? No head? You might recognize it. I just feel for some reason I should tell it before I get into the message. He was a high school teacher, a member of my church in Saskatoon.

He was not there when the Revival came. He left, became a professor in Acadia University in Eastern Canada and that's where he was when certain things happened. I spoke with three hills and somebody taped my five messages or four messages and mailed them to him.

Now this would have been fine. But at one time, I found out... See, he was a deacon in my church and had I known what was going on in the classroom, he wouldn't have been a deacon in my church. He used to tell dirty stories in the classroom.

And one night a girl went home. She was attending our church and she told her mother, I will never go back to Ebenezer Baptist Church again in my life. Mr. Nesdoni told this filthy story in the classroom, you know.

One of three hills, I mentioned this story, I didn't use any names, I told it in such a way that nobody could remotely guess who I was talking about except the guys, see. So the Lord moved in and somebody taped my message, I mailed them to him.

Here's what happened. I was holding meetings in the Maritimes in Woodstock and he came over and he told me how one day he was working in the garden and he said, I didn't hear a voice but it was almost like a voice saying, go and see what your wife is doing.

So he runs in the house, what is she doing? She's listening to one of these tapes. Guess which tape she's listening to. Guess where that tape was when he walked in the door. I just started to tell the story about the high school teacher that told a dirty story in the classroom.

You know, scary what God can do, you know. And so he said to me, I don't know if you're talking about me and he never asked me, so then I have to tell him. But he said, when you told that story, he said, you know, God didn't shoot an arrow into my heart, he flung a spear into my soul.

He said, my wife and I spent the last three weeks praying the prayer, search me, oh God. He said, Pastor Bill, we've dealt with everything God has shown us. Everything. Everything. And then he said, but that's not the problem.

He said, how do you deal with this big rotten self? Remember, self is the factory that manufactures the sin. We're always dealing with the finished product. God wants to bomb the factory. Now I explained that to him and he could see it in a second, he saw it.

And he started to pray, and oh, I've often wished I had that prayer on a tape. It was incredible. I mean, he forgot anybody was around. It was like he had both hands on the throne of God and was crying with all his might to God.

You know what the prayer was? Kill me. Kill me, God. Kill me dead. Kill me dead. Now. Now, God. Kill me. Now, God. Now. And he went on like this for five minutes. And then I heard him say, oh, what peace.

What peace. He was flooded with the Spirit of God. And you know what happened? The next Sunday he spoke in a Baptist church, which he often did a lot of preaching stuff. Halfway through his sermon, a gal got up and she was shaking and said, can you stop preaching?

I have to come to the altar and meet with my God. And he had good sense enough to give an invitation and half the church came to the altar and they were weeping before God, you know. And here's what he told me later on.

He said, you know, I was a high school teacher. I was known as a Christian professor. In 25 years, no one ever came to me to talk about God. I never sold to Christ. He used to sing. He had a tremendous voice.

He used to sing a lot. He said, I don't know if anybody got blessed through my singing. But after he met with God at Woodstock, he told me about nine months later, he said, I have prayed with 400 people personally since then.

Some people have led to Christ. Others are Christians that have led into full revival state. And that university professor began holding revival meetings. No kidding. In the Maritimes. He said, I know now why God never used me in 25 years.

I wasn't usable. I was so alive. I need to die. And remember, except a kernel of weight falling to the ground and die, it abides alone. You don't get anywhere. You don't do anything. But if it die, and that's the one qualification, if it die, you don't have to have a smart personality or a sharp mind.

You don't have to have anything really if you die to yourself. And put God first, you know. Let him have his way. He's retired now, living in Detroit, B .C. We phone a couple of times a year. But he can't forget, and I can't forget either what happened.

So many people met God in nine months more than it happened in 25 years, you know. But it's a dying part we don't like to think about or hear about or do. I spoke at Life Action not long back and there was a guy from New York who was the other speaker.

I'm so glad they put us together. We were as different in our puppet manners and that, you know, as night from day. It was just incredible. He walked up and down the aisles and preached in people's faces, you know.

I don't preach that way usually, but it was good to be with him because of what he was doing. And he had a thing I want to share with you. It was this. He said, you haven't done it until you've done it.

Does that make any sense? You can talk about it all you want. You can admire it. You can write about it. You can sing about it. You can talk about it. But you haven't done it until you've done it. And I read it later on those people.

It was great, you know. Just great stuff. You haven't done it until you've done it. Okay. I want to read from John's Gospel a few verses. Chapter 15, verse 11. These things I have spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full.

This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you.

Henceforth, which means of course from now on, I call you not servants for the servant doesn't know what his Lord is doing. But I have called you friends for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name He may give it to you.

Humanity Made in God's Image for Fellowship

Why did God make us in his image and in his likeness? Have you ever seen a horse pray? Ever seen a crocodile pray? Ever seen a bird pray? Have you ever seen an animal facing death pray for help? Doesn't happen, does it?

Why? Because they are not made in the image and likeness of God and who we are. But why did he do this? We are not animals. In spite of what everybody is saying today. You shouldn't kill a cob because he is one of your brothers.

Well, he might be your brother but he sure isn't mine, you know. He made us in his image so we could have fellowship together. That's why he did it. Someone said, the average Christian does not have fellowship with God.

He has fellowship with other Christians about God. I think that's right, you know. We fellowship with other Christians. We think it's having fellowship with God and often times it really is not. Let's think about that.

I think the forgotten thing in prayer is right here. Prayer is what? I'll give you two extremes. One taken from a book I read and the writer said, prayer is backing a three ton truck up to the warehouse of heaven and then driving away with a full load.

Now that's an extreme position. The other position is this. The guy said, well, you know, praying doesn't really get anything since there's no personal God and it doesn't get anywhere but it's good. It's kind of spiritual PT.

It's good for the soul to pray now and then and God does something for you. That's another extreme. But the fact is this, that God wants us to have fellowship with Him. You can't do it in five minutes, you know.

I mean sometimes five minutes is all we have. I understand that. But I mean basically to spend time with God means spending time with God. Charles Finney, 500 ,000 people found Christ through his labors when the population of the United States was probably half of the population of Canada today.

Dwight R. Moody saw a million people come to Christ in his work. Both of these men used to rise at 4 o 'clock in the morning and pray and study the scripture till 8 o 'clock every day of the year. That's how they started their day.

Do we do anything like that? You know, Moody is a young Christian. He went to talk to an older Christian because he wasn't seeing anything happen and he didn't know what the problem was. And so the older Christian said, Mr. Moody, take a deep breath.

And he did. Let it out. Let it out again. Well, he said, I can't let it out again until I breathe in again. That's right. That's your problem, he said. That's your problem. You're not breathing in. How can you breathe out?

You know. Remember that saying that the Holy Ghost is like electricity? Did you know that? Because neither of them can get into man unless they can get out. People want to be filled with the Spirit so they'll be happy and all this kind of stuff, you know.

God doesn't want to fill a person with the Holy Spirit unless we're willing to let the Spirit work through us. He that believes in me, as the Scripture said, of his innermost being, shall flow rivers of living water.

And sometimes there's not even a trickle going out. We don't worry about it, you know. Anyway. Christ spoke in the Scripture we read. He said, from henceforth, I'm not going to call you servants because the servant doesn't know what his master is up to, what he's doing.

But I've called you friends. For all things that I've heard of my Father, I've made known to you. There's an old song. I don't know if anybody here has ever heard it. I'll Be a Friend to Jesus. Any of you know that song?

You ever heard it? It's not in the books anymore. I'll Be a Friend to Jesus. It's quite biblical, you know. A friend. If we treated our friends the way we treat God, we wouldn't have any. You know. I mean, time-wise.

I remember a lady, she said, you know, I prayed out in five minutes, she said. What do you do after five minutes, you know? I said, think of your best friend. She thought, and I said, okay, I got her in my mind.

I said, are you two talked out in five minutes? Oh, heavens no, she said. We could talk for two hours and we're still going, you know. I said, so you're telling me that God is less interesting than your friend is?

That you're talked out in five minutes? What kind of a God do you pray to? Who is this God you're talking to? Do you know him? I mean, do you really know him? But, yeah, this is the problem. A friend to Christ.

Abraham as the Friend of God

Now, Jehoshaphat was leading an army. They had the biggest prayer meeting in history. Everybody in the nation was there in Judah. Everybody. Men, women, children, babies, everybody. They're all standing before God.

Because an enemy army had come in, they didn't know what to do. They didn't know what to do. Pray. That's the thing. That's why it's there. So they had a prayer meeting. And they called on God. Joshua did.

And he reminded God. He said, we are the seed of Abraham, your friend. Now, he didn't say, we're the seed of Abraham who long ago was your friend. That's not what he said. We are the seed of Abraham, your friend.

In other words, as far as Jehoshaphat was concerned, Abraham was still alive and well and rejoicing in God somewhere in the kingdom of God. That's what he meant. So in Isaiah 41, God said to Israel, you are the seed of Abraham, my friend.

He didn't say again, you're the seed of Abraham who long ago was my friend. God spoke as if Abraham was alive and well. Jesus said, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.

So he's saying the same thing. Abraham's alive and well in the presence of God. He's still a friend of God's. So in James chapter 2, James said, Abraham was called the friend of God. Does God need friends?

Yes, sometimes he does. Do you remember the curse pronounced in Judges chapter 5 upon the inhabitants of a place called Meroz? And God pronounced the curse upon them because he said they did not come to the help of the Lord to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

So in Psalm 94, God asked this question, who will rise up for me against the evil workers? Who will rise up for me against the workers of iniquity? Who will? God is looking for people to be his friends that he can put to work in his work.

And so because nobody rose up to stand with God, you know. There's that old song, it's not in the books anymore. All the good songs are gone, you know. And when you count up those who love the Lord, count me, count me.

When you count up those who love his word, count me, count me. Count me with the children of the heavenly king. Count me with those who his praises sing. When you count up those who love the Lord, count me, count me.

And God is looking for people to stand up for him and stand with him and be his friend, a friend to God. Now, Moses had a father-in-law who had many names, Jather, Jethro, Ruel, Raguel, four or five different names, you know.

Ruel and Raguel both meant the same thing. They meant the friend of God. He was very, seemed to be a dynamic, powerful person. You read about him eating before God, you read about him rejoicing before God.

He gave wisdom to his son-in-law, Moses, gave him some advice, and Moses took it and it helped him a lot. So not much is said about him. Now, he was a priest also. So he knew things about God. Where he got it from, I have no idea.

But his name meant a friend of God, you know. Did you ever think of yourself that way? Are you a friend of God? When God calls you, are you willing to spend time with God? I've enjoyed so much knowing Brother Detroit, you know, some of the stories.

Fellowship with God in the Lives of Moses and Elijah

You know, he's talking about being with these black men. There was a great revival among the Zulus in Africa some years ago, and somebody sent me some tapes on it, some videotapes and a book. The book was written by a German fellow.

He'd been an evangelist in South Africa for years. He had seen hundreds of people walk the aisles and profess to be saved. He didn't know of one that was walking with God. He came to a place where he finally decided he was going to give up preaching and just go back in the world.

He couldn't find anything real. Then he met some black men, and he prayed with these black men. He said he had a meeting with God one night that totally revolutionized his life forever. And a revival started among the Zulus.

They had to build a church seating 10 ,000. I saw a picture of the church. It wasn't quite completed. They had an average of 435 people come to them every day of the year seeking help. They didn't send teams out.

They didn't have to. It wasn't a charismatic thing. The charismatics heard about it, and they moved in and introduced tongues, and the revival began to drop away, and so the leaders had the good sense to stop it, and so they did.

They were not saying tongues was not a real gift. It may be, and I think is in some cases, but it was not what they needed then. So here's what was happening. People sitting in the meetings would be healed of all kinds of sicknesses.

There were 10 blind women decided to go down. They heard about this and see if they couldn't be healed. At the last moment, one of them couldn't go. So nine of them showed up, and one night sitting in one of the meetings, all nine were healed instantly of their sight.

Their sight came back, and they could hardly wait to get home and contact the 10th gal, and they contacted her. She said, What time of the day did this happen? My sight came back that same time. Back in the village.

See, God gets all the glory for this because of nobody laying hands on them. You know? It's incredible to read what happened there, but his story, he almost went back in the world. He couldn't find anything real.

It wasn't lasting, and then he met with God, and things happened. But Ruel, Raguel, Jethro, Hobat, he knew God. His name meant a friend of God's. Now it says about Moses that God spoke with Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.

And there's that word friend again. So they were good friends. You know, they once spent 80 days together, 40 days on two separate occasions. So I say to my son, What were these two doing up there in the mountain?

I mean, 80 days? What would you do if you were 80 days alone in the mountain? Nobody around but God, you know? Well, in one case it says that Moses came down from the mountain after he had been communing with God.

Communing with God. They were friends, you know? And they were talking back and forth. God says, Come now, let us reason together. He likes you to reason the case with him, you know? To talk with him.

You know, one time Spurgeon was suffering so horribly. It was like, it was bad. His friends were all around praying, and he said, Everybody leave! Everybody leave! And he said, Oh God, he said, If I was God and you were me, I wouldn't let you suffer like this.

And he was healed instantly. You can reason with God, you know. Well, it's good to know that. Well, Sam Jones, you know what happened to him? That Southern Methodist evangelist. He used to be an alcoholic.

Got saved, got into ministry, and God was using him in a mighty way. He was a contemporary of Moody's. And anyway, one night in a hotel, the old Westford Liquor returned. And he started, he got as far as the door, his hand on the door knob, and he ran back to bed and helped him, cried to God for help, and he ran back to the door.

He went back and forth about six times, you know? And finally, in desperation, he threw himself across the bed, and here was his prayer. Oh, God, can't you do a better job than this? And he was instantly delivered.

People, we've got a friend up there, you know. A very close friend. And so Moses, God spoke with him face to face. And later on, you know, when Miriam and Aaron, I think Miriam and Aaron, I say that because God struck her with leprosy, didn't strike Aaron with it.

Aaron was a weak guy. Miriam was strong, you know. And I think she got it because she had later, anyway. They began talking like this, Hey, Moses, who do you think you are? You know, God speaks to us too, you know.

Who do you think you are? And so God heard all this. And so He said, Come out, you three. I can just see Aaron winking at Miriam, you know, or she winking at him. Moses is going to find out now. So then the Lord asked Miriam and Aaron to step ahead, and Moses left behind.

Now they know for sure. Moses is really going to get it, you see. And it went like this. God said, When I speak to a prophet, I speak through visions and dreams. But my servant Moses is not so. With him I speak mouth to mouth.

Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? And she was struck with leprosy and stuck out of the camp for seven days. And so Moses, he had no problem spending 80 days with God. That wasn't wasted time.

That was wonderful. Elijah spent three and a half years in the wilderness, you know. Three and a half years, not 80 days. What did he do? What visitors did he have? He had two visitors twice a day. Ravens brought him food and flesh, you know, twice a day.

That's all he had. Would you go crazy? I've heard people say, If I had to spend three and a half years, I'd go crazy. Why didn't he go crazy? Because he was a friend of God's, you know. And there, man, he could talk to God any time he wanted, have God all to himself, you know.

And it was great. Anyway, Moses. And then, you know, you read about David, it says he was a man after God's own heart. What does that mean? Well, I don't really know. A man after God's own heart. I think it would probably mean he was a person who thought the way God thought and who did what God wanted him to do.

He failed, we know, twice in his life, once very seriously. But he came back to God. And Nathan said, The Lord also has put away your sin. You won't die. He knew he had sinned. And you know his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51 is as thorough as anything can be and a good model to follow when we sin against God.

But he was a man after God's own heart. He said, I prevented the dawning of the morning and prayed and cried. It means he got up before the sun got up to pray. You know, that's what it really means. Seven times a day he wrote, Do I praise you because of your righteous judgments?

Seven times a day praising God, you know, see. And evening and morning and noon will I pray and cry aloud and he'll hear my voice. In Psalm 88 he said, Night and day I prayed continually before God. And so he was a man of prayer.

Prayerful Preparation for Revival

He spent much time along with God. I know in talking with Duncan Campbell, which we did, we had him in our church two years before the revival. And we learned a lot from him personally about the place of prayer and how little time we give to God.

How little quality time we ever give to God. We don't do that. We're so busy. I heard him speak when I was a very young Christian and he said, he was talking about Finney's ministry and then he said, in comparison to what God did through him, a lot of you people think you're busy.

You're just plain buzzy. You know. I have a friend down in Texas. He's a book publisher. He wants to write a story on my life. I said, brother, listen. Who's ever going to read it? I mean, you'll have all these books piled up that nobody's going to buy and you're going to have to give them away.

You know, I have a friend like that. He did that. He had a book on his life and he wasn't able to sell them. He has to give the book away, you know. So I said, what's the point, you know? But the guy keeps bugging me.

He gets on my... He phones me, talks to me on the phone, wants to come up and spend three days with me and talk about it. Well, I've always said, you know, why should we talk for three days about it? No, you know.

But anyway, the guy keeps bugging me. So I shouldn't put it this way, but finally I prayed about it. And the Lord gave me a green light in a peculiar way. He told me what the title has to be. The title has to be A Mosquito with a Broken Wing.

And that's the title, see. I haven't told him yet down in Texas. He probably won't handle it when he finds out what the title has to be. But what I got to know about this is exactly what my ministry is like.

It's just a mosquito. You see, even a mosquito with a broken wing can buzz a little, right? So I can buzz a little for God, you know. I've been doing some of that around the country. But I just, I got a broken wing.

I've never done anything great, you know. Ran a lot of Bible camps and started some churches and a few little things here and there. But nothing was shaky. So, that's the title. It may never see the press because I don't think he'll go with it.

But that's okay. It doesn't bother me any. But David, a man after God's own heart. John the Baptist. John the Baptist in John chapter 3, he called himself a friend of the bridegroom. Did you know that?

He said the friend of the bridegroom, he hears the bridegroom's voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled, he said. So he reckoned he was a friend to Christ. They were cousins. And at one point, although they were cousins, he didn't know that Jesus, his cousin, was the Son of God.

But he said, He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same as he who baptized with the Holy Ghost. And I saw in bare record that this is the Son of God.

But he looked on himself as being just a friend to Christ. Are you really a friend to God? It isn't a question of how much time, and yet in a sense it is a question of how much time do we give to God.

You know, we rush in and we rush out. And we do a lot of things that amount to nothing. We spend a lot of time doing things that amount to nothing. And then we wonder why. God has been blessing. I've been in foreign countries.

I've seen Christians in churches there. Joanne Shetler in the Philippines, 30 years ago, she and another American girl flew in to an allocation. They got to this village. They didn't know that the local custom was if a woman shows up in a village or a man and no one adopts them into the family, they can be murdered, they can be raped, they can be robbed.

They didn't know that. So they're wandering around through this village and a man came and he spoke to them and he explained to them. He said, I want to adopt you into my family. And then he explained why.

And so they gladly accepted this adoption. And then after six months, one girl quit. She got chicken and she went home. And Joanne stayed for 25 years. And she got the local language reduced to writing.

She got the New Testament completed. She was in a helicopter crash one day. I flew into that allocation with a friend of mine one time and we talked a little church she'd started. It was really something to see.

But she'd been in this helicopter crash and it was a work helicopter loaded with cement bags. And the thing crashed and it was hours before help got to them. It was a very hot day. The cement bags broke open.

She was lying there sweating and the cement on the sweat and she got burned badly from that, you know. And she hurt her back. It never did fully recover. She's in Winnipeg right now in the Grant Memorial Church, by the way.

Yeah, that's what I heard the other day. But she gave her testimony at Urbana. You know, it's a place where they have every three years or so they have all kinds of missions get together. She gave her testimony.

Somebody sent me a tape of it. Just having been there. When she was through, that crowd went wild. They were clapping. They were cheering. They were whistling. They were shouting. I never saw anything like it.

I heard the story. Faithfulness of God. He found someone who was a friend to God, you know. And she just, no matter what. Because we know he never forgets, never forsakes. He's never had a problem in his life.

God hasn't, you know. And so, we can trust him and we should trust him. But he said, you're my friends if you do whatever I command you. And that's where the problem comes in. We let things, we let people, and sometimes we let plans, which might be quite orthodox in themselves.

We let these things crowd us. I see Henry Blackaby, I heard him say in a meeting a while ago, he said he used to get up at six in the morning and that didn't do it. So I started getting up at five in the morning and that didn't do it.

So I started getting up at four o 'clock in the morning and that did it. That's his style. That's great. That doesn't work for me. God doesn't do it all the same, you know. So, I think it's great what he's doing.

But it goes like this, Lord, long ago, right after Revival in Saskatoon, I thought we've had a touch from God, we need something great going from coast to coast where hundreds of thousands might find Christ as their Savior.

So, I started rising every night to pray for Revival in Canada. And I'll just share this with you, I don't think I've ever shared this publicly before, but at one point we were talking, the Lord and I, and I took Canada and I draped it over the throne of God.

And I told God, Lord, I'm putting Canada, all of Canada, across your throne and it's staying there until you do it. I keep reminding God every time, almost every time I pray, Lord, Canada on your throne, remember?

All of Canada. And maybe you can get into that too and pray that way. He'll do it. I don't know when or how or through whom, that isn't important, but He'll do it, I know He's faithful. Anyway, I get up whenever He awakens me, it might be 1230, it might be 1300, it might be 3300, it might be 4 o 'clock, whenever I get up and pray for 15 minutes, it may be up to an hour on occasion, up to an hour and a half.

I know sometimes God has laid such a burden on me for the world, I pray for every country in the world. I probably miss a few. The big countries, they're easy to remember, but the smaller countries, some of them only 20 ,000 people, and sometimes I forget some of those.

Anyway, God's field is the world. And everybody's got 24 hours in the day, right? So what do we do with it? What are we doing with our friend, that we give him so little quality time? And we're so afraid to let him have his way, for fear he might ask us to do something we don't want to do.