Friendship With God — Bill McLeod

I came across something in my reading today, and I'm going to do something I haven't done in 43 years in the ministry. I'm going to read something I read today to you, okay? It really touched my heart.

Brother Bill, wouldn't it be a place to pray for you right now?

Well, of course. Would you like to do that? I'd appreciate it. All right, let's do that.

Our Lord God and Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can come to you at any time. And we can make our requests known to you. And you have again reminded us of the fact that we are so forgetful in our praying.

And we repent of that. We're sorry for that. We thank you, Lord, for the reminder. And right now, Lord, we hold our brother Bill up to you as he is prepared to minister to us. We trust, Lord, that in the midst of all our activity, we will be able to become quiet before you so that your word can minister to us.

Empower your servant this evening. Give him great liberty. Give him peace of mind. Give him the assurance that you are right there to strengthen him and to uphold him. And we want to do that with our prayers even as he speaks.

We expect, Lord, that you're going to speak to us tonight through your servant, whom we all love, whom you love. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

The Necessity of Unction in Gospel Preaching

All the minister's efforts will be vanity or worse than vanity if he do not have unction. Unction must come down from heaven and spread a savor and feeling and relish over his ministry. And among the other means of qualifying himself for his office, the Bible must hold the first place.

And the last also must be given to the word of God and prayer. In the Christian system, unction is the anointing of the Holy Ghost, separating unto God's work and qualifying for it. This unction is the one divine enablement by which the preacher accomplishes the peculiar and saving ends of preaching.

Without this unction, there are no true spiritual results accomplished. The results and forces in preaching do not rise above the results of unsanctified speech. Without unction, the former is as potent as the pulpit.

This divine unction on the preacher generates through the word of God the spiritual results that flow from the gospel. And without this unction, these results are not secured. Many pleasant impressions may be made, but these all fall far below the ends of gospel preaching.

This unction may be simulated. There are many things that look like it. There are many results that resemble its effects. But they are really foreign to its results and to its nature. The fervor or softness excited by a pathetic or emotional sermon may look like the movements of the divine unction, but they have no pungent, penetrating, heart-breaking force.

No heart-healing balm is there in these surface, sympathetic, emotional movements. They are not radical. They are not sin-searching nor sin-curing. This divine unction is the one distinguishing feature that separates true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting truth.

It backs and interpenetrates the revealed truth with all the force of God. It illumines the word and broadens and enriches the intellect and empowers it to grasp and apprehend the word. It qualifies the preacher's heart and brings it to that condition of tenderness, of purity, of force, and light that are necessary to secure the highest results.

This unction gives to the preacher liberty and enlargement on thought and soul, a freedom, fullness, and directness of utterance that can be secured by no other process. Without this unction on the preacher, the gospel has no more power to propagate itself than any other system of truth.

This is the seal of its divinity. Unction in the preacher puts God in the gospel. Without the unction, God is absent, and the gospel is left to the low and unsatisfactory forces that the ingenuity, interest, or talents of men can devise to enforce and project its doctrines.

It is in this element that the pulpit oftener fails than in any other element. Just at this all-important point it lapses, learning it may have. Brilliancy and eloquence may delight in charm. Sensation or less offensive methods may bring the populace in crowds.

Mental power may impress and enforce truth with all its resources. But without this unction, each and all these will be but as the fretful assault of the waters on a gibraltar. Spray and foam may cover and spangle, but the rocks are still there, unimpressed and unimpressible.

The human heart can no more be swept of its hardness and sin by these human forces than these rocks can be swept away by the ocean's ceaseless flow. This unction is the consecration force, and its presence the continuous test of that consecration.

It is this divine anointing on the preacher that secures his consecration to God and his work. Other forces and motives may call him to the work, but this only is consecration. A separation to God's work by the power of the Holy Spirit is the only consecration recognized by God as legitimate.

The unction, the divine unction, this heavenly anointing, is what the pulpit needs and must have. This divine and heavenly oil, put on it by the imposition of God's hand, must soften and lubricate the whole man, heart, head, spirit, until it separates him with a mighty separation from all earthly, secular, worldly, selfish motives and aims, separating him to everything that is pure and godlike.

It is the presence of this unction on the preacher that creates the stir and friction in many a congregation. The same truths have been told in the strictness of the letter, but no ruffle has been seen, no pain or pulsation felt.

All is as quiet as a graveyard. Another preacher comes, and this mysterious influence is on him. The letter of the word has been fired by the Spirit. The throes of a mighty movement are felt. It is the unction that pervades and stirs the conscience and breaks the heart.

Unctionless preaching makes everything hard and dry, acrid and dead. This unction is not a memory or an era of the past only. It is a present, realized, conscious fact, or should be. It belongs to the experience of the man as well as to his preaching.

It is that which transforms him into the image of his divine master, as well as that by which he declares the truths of Christ with power. It is so much the power in the ministry as to make all else seem feeble and vain without it, and by its presence to atone for the absence of all other and feebler forces.

Prayer as the Source of Preaching Unction

This unction is not an inalienable gift. It is a conditional gift, and its presence is perpetuated and increased by the same process by which it was at first secured, by unceasing prayer to God, by impassioned desires after God, by estimating it, by seeking it with tireless ardor, by deeming all else loss and failure without it.

How and whence comes this unction? Direct from God, in answer to prayer. Praying hearts only are the hearts filled with his holy oil. Praying lips only are anointed with his divine unction. Prayer, much prayer, is the price of preaching unction.

Prayer, much prayer, is the one, the sole condition of keeping this unction. Without unceasing prayer, the unction never comes to the preacher. Without perseverance in prayer, the unction, like the manna over-kept, breeds worms.

It's a book someone gave me recently. It's called Power Through Prayer and Purpose in Prayer by E .M. Barnes. Two books in one. I recall reading something that Jonathan Edwards said. It's much along the same lines.

He said that the Holy Spirit is the preacher's hands, and without these hands you can't reach the consciences of men. And to preach without the unction of the Holy Spirit is to preach without hands. You can't lay hold of men's consciences.

Friendship With God as the Foundation of Prayer

And of course it's so true. Last night when I shared a little bit, I talked about the foundation of prayer being fellowship with God. And Lou shared a thought with me today that we might take the word fellowship out and put the word friendship in.

And I like that. The foundation of prayer, of a genuine prayer life, is friendship with God. And unless we have this, we'll find ourselves praying selfishly, and I'm sure praying without the Spirit many times.

We want some immediate action, and so we pray for immediate action, but we really don't have fellowship with God. And I was saying last night, if you will recall, you were not all there, that this is absolutely, in my opinion, it's absolutely foundational.

It's often forgotten. We are laying a prayer trip on people and saying, pray more than you do, have a prayer list, make a longer prayer list, or whatever. We're laying it on them. But if we don't have fellowship of God to begin with as a foundation of prayer, it isn't going to work.

They'll be stirred, they'll want to do something better than they're doing, but it can't be done. I don't think, maybe I'm wrong, but not us having constant fellowship of God. I think it has to start there.

Abraham as the Friend of God

And I would like to enlarge on that somewhat tonight. Abraham was called the friend of God. Remember that? So when you think of a friend, what do you think of? Somebody that always comes and asks for something?

But that's what we do with God. It's not even somebody that always comes and thanks you for something. It's somebody that understands you, somebody that you understand, somebody that talks to you, that wants you to talk to them.

Abraham then was called the friend of God. And it's James who says that in James 2 .23, which he takes from Isaiah 41 .8. He was called the friend of God. And the Lord said this about Abraham, I know him.

Well, we say, yeah, but God knows everybody. Yes, but the way God spoke there, I think it's more than just knowing everybody. That he knew Abraham in a totally different way. Didn't the Lord say in Matthew 7 to certain people, I never knew you?

It's in that sense he's speaking then about Abraham. I know him. I know what he'll do. He's my friend. He'll command his children after him. And they'll keep the way of the Lord. I know him. And of course, God knew Abraham because they spent a lot of time in fellowship together.

And it would have been a blessing in some ways, perhaps, to live in those days where things didn't move so quickly. And if you went to spend three hours with God, nobody would even notice it. But today, if you spend three hours with God, they wonder what you're doing, sleeping?

Or what's he wasting time for? And it's more difficult now than it used to be. And I know for myself, I'm trying to cultivate this friendship with God aspect. Jesus said, From now on, I will not call you servants, because the servant doesn't know what his master is doing, but I've called you friends.

Because all things that I've heard of my father, I have made known unto you. And you are my friends if you do whatever I command you. That's something else he said over there in John chapter 15. So Abraham, the friend of God.

I remember wondering in Matthew, when Judas came and Jesus said, Friend, why are you come? Why are you come? But he called him friend. Perhaps the word is companion. And in the prophetic scriptures, when Judas Iscariot was referred to, it was my own familiar friend who ate of my bread and sat at my table that lifted up his heel against me.

Jesus treated Judas as a friend, although Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that did not believe and who would betray him. But he made no difference. When it came to Judas, even although, as I say, he knew what the end would be.

But to me, it's a beautiful thought. Like, you know, in Galatians 4 it says,. But now, after that you have known God, or rather, are known of God. I think what a blessing it is that there's one person in the universe that understands me.

I don't even understand myself sometimes. I really don't. And sometimes I'm groaning in my spirit. I don't even know what I'm groaning about. But God knows. And it's such a beautiful thing to me that I can go to one that understands me.

And not only that, but knows my past record and still loves me. Knows all my failures. Still loves me. Still accepts me. Still listens to me. Still talks to me. Isn't angry with me. Doesn't leave me. I think it's marvelous.

It's just such a beautiful thing to me to have a friend. There's an old song. I haven't heard it for years. I'll be a friend to Jesus. Have you ever heard it? Yeah. That's it. You want to sing it, Dick?

You started. But that's just the lesser part of it. The greater part is that he's a friend to me. He's my friend. That's marvelous. And if I keep that in mind when I come to pray, I'm not going to make the mistake of the horse leech that had two daughters crying, give, give, over there in Proverbs.

Moses and the Need for Extended Fellowship With God

I'm going to come to my God and talk to my God as I would talk to a friend. So Abraham was called the friend of God. Moses was called the man of God. He couldn't get enough of God. He could never have too much of God.

Forty days and forty nights. Do you know what he said about it? He said, I fell down before him as I did the first time. Forty days and forty nights alone with God. Man! You know, they're looking at their watches after an hour.

The average Christian, I mean. It's too much. But if it's a football game, I mean, that can go three hours. Or a hockey game, it can go over time as long as it needs to. No problems. But God, we want so much, we get so much, and that's it.

And then we cut him off. And this little 15 minute a day thing, fellowship with God, I think it's a total insult to God. And I'm not surprised we have the kind of problems we have in our churches and sometimes in our own lives when we give God so little time.

I mean, time when we're not asking God for anything. When Miriam stirred up Aaron, you know, Aaron was a weak kind of a guy, easily stirred up, and they questioned Moses' authority. Do you remember how God handled it?

He called the three of them out. And then he said to the two, if I call a prophet, I speak to him in visions and dreams, but not with Moses. He's special. I speak with him face to face, mouth to mouth.

He even beholds the similitude of the Lord. Why weren't you afraid to speak against my servant Moses? Now, Moses was younger than Aaron, two years. Why should he have this special place with God? Why wouldn't Aaron have it?

He had it because he wanted it. And God gave it to him because he took it. Nothing more, nothing less. Moses, the man of God. And you know, it says that Moses died by the word of the Lord. The Hebrew language says he died by the mouth of the Lord.

And this has given rise to a beautiful Jewish tradition that the Lord kissed Moses on the lips, and that's how he died. Now, that may not be true. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. I don't know.

It does say he died by the mouth of the Lord. So you have to interpret that any way that you can. So Moses was a man of God. I think of myself, would anybody call me a man of God? Would anybody call you a man of God, a woman of God?

Moses' Meekness and Committing Our Causes to God

Would they think of us this way? What did they think of? God really slapped me in the face. You know, Miriam got spit in the face. Because after this happened, God said, if her father had but spit in her face, wouldn't you have to put her outside the camp, stick her outside the camp for seven days, which was God's way of saying, look, I just spit in your face, Miriam.

You better not try this again. And you know, Moses never defended himself. He fell on his face before God and never said a word. He didn't have to. Like Jesus, when he was reviled, he did not revile again.

When he suffered, he didn't threaten. He committed himself. The Marjorie says he committed his cause to him that judges righteously. Let God take over. Man, he can do such a beautiful job, even spit in people's faces, if that has to be done.

Let God do it. Don't you do it. Leave it with him. So Moses, the man of God. But the thing that happened to me was years ago, and there was another preacher with me and we were dealing with the case. This woman needed to be prayed with.

Her husband was there. They were Christian workers. She was in rather deep trouble. Oh, this was after revival, to make the story completely honest. And I hadn't seen this couple since before the revival.

They knew, of course, something had happened in my life. But we needed, we had to pray with her. We counseled with her. It was time to pray. And then she said, and this was the embarrassing part for me, she said, Bill, I would much rather you didn't pray for me.

And I said, well, that's fine. I didn't ask her why, but she told us why. She said, you know, when I think of you, like I was a district worker with our conference, used to come down in all the churches, you know.

She said, when I think of you, I think of a person telling a lot of jokes, and that's not what I want right now. How would you feel if somebody said that to you? I'll tell you. I felt terrible. Absolutely terrible.

But I thank God for the rebuke. Because there was a time when I came around and the first thing the preachers wanted to hear was my funny stories, you know. And I had thousands of them. Could even act them out, see.

So I try and keep my big mouth shut, and I was a little bit nervous yesterday. I know there's a place for humor. Spurgeon had a tremendous sense of humor, you know, and one day some lady bawled him out for having used a little humor in the pulpit, and he said, Lady, if you knew how much I held back, you'd feel sorry for me.

Becoming Men and Women of God

But anyway, a man of God. And we want to be men and women of God. Men that never get, men and women that never get enough of God and never get too much of God. We know him, we want to know him better.

We want to have a deeper walk with God. Like Paul, as we thought, I think, somewhere yesterday, wasn't it? That I may know him. He knew him. That I may know him. He wasn't satisfied with where he was at.

Forgetting those things that are behind him. Reaching forth into those things that are before. But people, it's going to happen, as we learn how, as I learn how, to be alone with my God and to listen to him.

Let him speak to my heart. Mouth to mouth. As friend to friend. And he will make you and I into men and women of God. But it can't be done by 15 minutes a day. I don't think. Then David was called a man after God's own heart.

David's Heart for God and the Refreshment of the Psalms

And of course, when we think of David, we almost instinctively think of his sin. He was called a man after God's own heart in the New Testament. That was something that happened. It happened once. He only failed God once, the Bible says, in this respect.

Thank God it's there. All the warts and blemishes. God's hero is one of the reasons why we know the Bible is inspired. Because the writers never gloss over the imperfections of the heroes. I mean, if men were writing the story, you wouldn't know that David ever committed adultery with Bathsheba.

You'd never know that. And you wouldn't know about some things Abraham did. Unbelief, fear of man. You wouldn't know about the fight that Paul and Barnabas had. These things wouldn't be there. But they are there, and that's an encouragement, of course, to us to know that they were not perfect, we are not perfect, but we try to walk with our God.

And He changes us as we do this. A man, after God's own heart, who shall fulfill all my will. The Lord hath sought him, the Old Testament says, in 1 Samuel 14, the Lord hath sought him, a man, after his own heart, is what it says there.

And it's indirectly connected with David, but Acts chapter 13 connects it with David. And he's the man, after God's own heart, who fulfilled the will of God, and so it says, David served his own generation by the will of God and fell asleep.

And he said, you remember, he wanted to finish his course with joy and the ministry which he had received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. He didn't want anything to come in between and prevent him from doing the work that God had called him to do.

A man, after God's own heart. Are you a man or a woman, after God's own heart? When you read the Psalms, you get a glimpse of David's heart, don't you? I mean, he wrote most of the Psalms, and he must have spent hours with God to have gained the insights he did.

Beautiful. What would the Bible be without the Psalms? I mean, there wouldn't be a Presbyterian church, for one thing. There couldn't be. And the many, many, many, the hundreds of times, and maybe thousands of times, that my spirit's been refreshed by reading the Psalms.

When I'm down, I instinctively turn to the Psalms. I don't know where else to go. And the Psalms refresh my spirit. A pastor came to see me a while ago. He'd been to see me before, and he gets victory, doesn't seem to last too long, and he's back again.

And he was back again. And I shared with him, as we share with people, and at the end he said, I know it all. I know all those Bible verses. I know all the techniques, the whole business, but it doesn't work for me.

What do you do then? Well, I prayed, because he indicated we might as well end the conversation, and he would go. And I prayed, and I opened my Bible, and I don't know why, but I was thinking of Psalm 143.

When I opened my Bible, it opened to Psalm 142. And my eye caught something there, and I read it to him. I just read it. It's a short Psalm, Psalm 142. I read it to him. And he said, Oh, oh, read it again.

And I did. Oh, Bill, he said, it's ministered to my heart. Oh, thank God. And he left my office just rejoicing, see. So it wasn't the counseling technique. It was the Word of God. And David, David was the author, a man after God's own heart.

Elijah, Prayer, and Spiritual Empowerment

I want to be that kind of person. Friend of God, man of God, and then a man after God's own heart. And you know, Elijah, I'm glad this is there in James 5, Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are.

I suppose we get to think sometimes that these men were extraordinary somehow, that a special connection with heaven that we don't have today that enabled them to have the kind of victory they enjoyed.

Not so. Not so at all. Elijah, great prophet that he was. You know, he got afraid of a woman and ran off into the wilderness. It's a fact. He did. And that's all recorded in the Bible, too. He was a man of like passions as we are, but he had sense enough, someone said, to pray earnestly.

Urgent in prayer. Instant means urgent in prayer. He had sense enough to pray earnestly. And of the earlier disciples, it's written, they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and breaking of bread and in prayers.

And what was the result? And fear came upon every soul because the Christians were all praying and praying. God was answering. And people were spending time with God. And he was speaking. Elijah, a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly in his prayer that it might not rain and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.

And he prayed again and the heaven gave rain and the earth brought forth her fruit. I read a while ago, and I think some of you heard me share this before. I'm sure not all of you, maybe not any of you.

Seeking God Alone for Revival and Unction

It was in an African Christian publication. And here was a man, a recent convert, and he came to the missionaries and said, God has called me to be a pastor. The missionaries had a little con flag by themselves and they talked about it.

Him, a pastor? Number one, he's a new convert. Number two, he hasn't got it. Number three, he'll never have it. He just doesn't have it up here, you see. So what they did, they put him on the back burner and said, well, come back in two months.

We want to pray about this. So he came back in two months. They thought he'd forget. He didn't. He was back in two months. And so they talked to him again and gave him pretty well the same runaround. They said, well, now look, we have prayed about it.

We don't have any clear direction from God, but we suggest you wait perhaps another two or three months and come back again. He came back again and they kept putting him off and putting him off. And he came back and he said, God has called me to be a pastor.

I know it, see. And do you know what these rascally missionaries did? They had a church that could have written its own, you know, history of the wars of the Lord. Maybe I mentioned this in one of the meetings.

But anyway, they gave it to him. Twelve members was all it had left and fighting so much, you know. They thought it'll go belly up and he'll discover he was not called to preach and would be resolved to the problem.

Quite simple. But that's not what happened because when the story was written, he was still the pastor of the church and had 5 ,000 members. But the thing that interested me about the whole story was this, that this man was a man of prayer and he'd found this cave back in the hills so he would go back.

He'd tell his congregation, God is calling me away to fellowship with him. I do not know when I will be back. Well, nowadays, if you tell your church that, they'd fire you. You're going off with a sack of food to a cave in the bush by some little creek and you don't know when you're coming back.

Oh, man, we'll get another preacher. But that's what he told them many times. They let him go. They just had to get other ministry. He'd come back. Every time he came back, he was so full of the Spirit, the unction of God, there'd be a new revival.

Many, many people would be converted. Then six months later, it happened again, maybe oftener than that. He'd do it again. Richard Ellsworth, I think he's passed on now, he wrote quite a number of books, Bush O 'Glow, The Shadow of the Broad Brim, and so on, books on Spurgeon and Moody and other, Finney and so on.

Barak and Buckskins was a story of Moody's or of Finney's life. And he tells of a time in his ministry as a young pastor. He pastored in a town where there was mountains nearby and he too had found a cave.

And he said, I used to go into that cave and stay there for days and I never came out until the stars were shining in my eyes. And then he, it was kind of a lamentation, he said, the stars haven't been shining in my eyes for years.

He just never had the time for fellowship with God. And it's a sad thing, people, when we get that busy and of course, we are too busy. When God is calling us, then it's time to go. Whatever, whenever, he knows best.

Solitude With God and the Cost of Spiritual Ministry

And sometimes it's hard to get started. We may be a little bit rusty, but we have to do it. This unction thing we read about here, how do we get it? You don't get it in school. You don't just get it by asking for it and claiming it by faith.

That's part of it, but it's sure not the whole story. Because I have to be, I have to be alone with God. He's the potter and I'm the clay. When I'm alone with God, that's when God works in my heart. That's when He talks to me.

Remember, Phineas said, prayer is not to change God, it's to change me. So that God can, consistent with His eternal holy purposes, do the things He always wanted to do, but could not do, because I was not spiritually prepared.

It's not to change God. It's not to overcome God's reluctance, but to lay hold of God's willingness. And so to me, increasingly clearly, foundational to all prayer is fellowship with God. So I begin by just talking to my friend.

And he makes me a man of God. And I want to be, and he will make me to be a man after God's own heart, who will fulfill all his will. But I don't know if any other way can happen but just me spending time with God.

I know my own heart too well. It's easy to go through the motions, the human spit and all, you know, it's easy to do that. But it's just not God's way to get a message from God. How do we do it? There's books and sermons, you know.

I heard preachers had their sermons numbered. And they had a system whereby you just, you pull out a straw and it had a number on it, that's the one you preach. They said it was just as successful as any other method they'd ever tried.

And I wouldn't doubt it. You know, I mean, I heard of a Catholic priest and he had his sermons all named with ladies' names, Marie and Anne and so on. And he had another friend who did the same thing, so they used to call each other up on the telephone.

Who did you preach yesterday? Well, I preached Daniel. Oh, I preached Helen. And it was a big joke. But people, it's no joke to be alone with God until your heart is burning and sometimes your spirit is crushed and you're on your face on the carpet crying and you tell God, God, I don't know why you ever called me to preach.

I don't have anything to say. And you tell God that. I guess I've told God that a thousand times. How do I preach? I never went to school. So I don't know how. But thanks for people to pray. That's what helps.

That's what does it. And I know when I'm alone with God, then He speaks to my heart. And He puts the whole thing together. You know, sometimes when I'm speaking, the whole thing's standing out here and He just comes at me like this.

And it's just so great. But it never happens that way, just that way. It's something God does when I pay the price. And it shouldn't be a price to pay to be alone with God, but there's so many other things pressing in on our time.

We just don't have time for God. And it's so sinful. So sinful. And such a revelation of the low state of our spirituality and the weakness of our hearts that we have to be begged and urged and pushed and cajoled and beaten up before we'll go to God.

It's terrible. Now, I'm sure that many of the things that happen would not have to happen. But God in His loving kindness whom the Lord loves, He chastens and scourges every son whom He receives. If you'd be without chastisement, wherefore, all our partakers are not your bastards and not sons.

It says that. So God spanks us because we don't listen. Because they have no changes, therefore, they fear not God. I'll tell you, it's not good to be in a situation where everything goes along smoothly because, you know, no changes, we forget God.

We don't fear God anymore. And so He brings these changes and sometimes they're drastic to make us think of Him. For our own good, not for His. What does it add to Him if you gave Him everything you had?

All your talents and all your time and all your money. What does that give to God? Your righteousness doesn't commend you to God, doesn't help God at all. The Bible says that. And your wickedness doesn't take anything away from God either.

He's the great I Am. Far beyond us, transcendent God. We're little spots on this mud ball, you know. We're nothing at all. And that God would even bother with us is a miracle to me. That God in His grace would even think of us and bother to spend the time to correct us and change us and plead with us and all this kind of thing.

God said, I'm married to you, backsliding children. Come back, I'm married. He's standing over there waiting for us to come back. What does He want us back for? We've forgotten Him so often. But He does.

Because we're His children. He loves us. And He knows our frame. He remembers we're dust. Isn't that great? Isn't that great? He knows that. Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him.