Prayer - Asking Aright — A.W. Tozer

Prayer, Corporate Worship, and Asking Aright

This morning I want to talk on prayer. I have three texts. I've been using three texts since I've been here. It's not a habit, it just happened that way. I never allow myself to get into numbers, but I have three texts.

One is 516 of James, the effectual, fervent prayer for a righteous man availeth much. A positive statement. And here's a negative statement. In the fourth chapter of James, we have not because he asked not and receive not.

You ask amiss that you may consume it upon your lust not to think. The great Spanish martyr and mystic said prayer is an ascent or elevation of the mind to God. It is above all that I see him, nor converse with him, but to herself above all creatures.

Now we'll begin there, and then notice that one of them says that the potent is taught in both the old and demonstrated also both in the Old and in the New Testament. The second text is a potent thing, yet sometimes we pray and do not have the cause either.

We have failed, but we ask selfishly to consume it on our lusts. But the third text says that nevertheless to pray and not let any stand in the way. Now there's a lot of prayer going on these days. I suppose there's more in the evangelical circles and outside, too, than for a long, long time.

God's on everything these days. Being circularized and pressured to do a lot of things he's not going to do. Let's save our time, go for a walk. Being pressured to get him over on the side of a selfish project, God's prayer has become a lobby.

Instead of praying, he's pressured to bless projects that may be unscriptural, carry on, and to relieve him of the necessity of living. He may be praying in order that he might be given an opportunity to travel at other people's expense.

Not by bus, either, nor freighter, but by super-constellation. Such men call prayer meetings by radio and letter, and even write prayer meetings. After all, that's a small price to pay for getting such power as God has over on your side if you want something done.

But the simple fact is, God never responds to any such prayers, any more than on the Mount of Carmel. He just lets people close their sleepy eyes and go on about certain personal interests which never ought to be brought up at all.

We should talk over with God in privacy. Often they are not of any interest to be shared. They just embarrass people or waste other people's time. I was in a prayer meeting once when I was a young pastor, and the leader of the prayer said, request for prayer for Mrs.

So-and-so. Our sister has it, and she wants prayer. So they solemnly got down on their knees, never cracked a smile, nobody burst into tears, while they prayed for that woman's twitching eyelids. I just recommend she rub it, that's what I do.

Just rub it and it'll quit. These are personal and we ought not to bother the corporate body with such trifles. A kind of prayer we call corporate prayer. That is, it is the praying of the people. And according to the scriptures, this is most potent prayer for where two or three are gathered.

Three, you are familiar with the text. If we are going to pray successfully in our corporate prayer meeting, we must pray in harmony with the will of God and in harmony with the work he has set us to do in our prayers, and not just meet and scatter our prayers, but have an aim, something we're aiming at.

And that aim must be God's. Now there are two objectives that I want to talk about today, and some of you will be surprised that I don't mention them. There are two objectives which ought to be on everybody's prayer.

Here I give them to you. And they ought to be there as targets that we connect. They ought to be there as mountains to attack with our bulldozers of prayer. These are, and I think I can say this without qualification or any marginal annotation to apologize for, I think I can say this without qualification, that these two things are the most important things in the world now.

The first one is always of vital importance, and this happens to be of vital importance now. At some other time it might not be. One is. And these are the two that ought to excite our prayer in private.

And every time the corporate body meets, we ought to inform ourselves. We ought to get instructed. And then we ought to pray with a purpose, and in intensity, and repetition, and yearning, and discipline, and self-sacrifice, and prayer.

The General uses every kind of ammunition he has. This country needs, what the Church needs, is a vision of the Most High God. Now hear me. I'm not just making up a sermon here to preach to you. This can be checked and tested.

This can be proved, that what we need, more than we need anything else, is a restoration of the vision of the Most High God. The honor of God has been lost to men. And the God of today is a weakling. He's a little, cheap, palsy God, running around.

He's the man upstairs. He's the fellow that will help you when you're in difficulty, not when you're not. We've reduced the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I saw a little fellow down by the lake. He was keeping time with one of the legs of the monkey.

I said, Well, Brother, I don't know if there was any. I don't think there was any. I don't think there was any jet burn, but he was keeping time to the music. Well, we have a stuffed God now in evangelical circles, and that can be appealed to by anybody at any time.

The clown on the radio will break into his fun and say, Now have you seen the half-converted cowboy dressed like an idiot? We'll say, After he's twanged out some sexy numbers, he'll say a holy number.

And he sings a holy number. God is approached by everybody, because that kind of God, you see, can be approached by anybody. God can be. And we've lost the glory and the honor of God. There was a day when men believed in the sovereignty of God.

The Calvinists believed in the sovereignty of God, and the Arminians believed in the sovereignty of God stronger yet than the Calvinists. And the great God of the Bible is a God into whose presence you go with fear.

You cannot come dashing in in your tennis outfit. You have to go into God and then rush out again. Over in the city of Chicago, there was a meeting. Did I tell this the other day? I don't know whether I did or not.

If I didn't hear it, it was a meeting of the Christian Businessmen's Committee. Now, this is not true of all of the Christian businessmen or their committees. I work a lot. But this particular convention was being held there.

One of the big shots of the Christian Businessmen's Committee came dashing in one time and got the platform. And he said, I've just been in a meeting. God said, there was a fine-looking old gentleman down there.

He got up and said, Mr. Chairman, what do you have to say? He said, I came all the way from New England to Chicago to meet God. I thought when I got here that there would be a sense of the presence of God on our convention.

I thought that we went and worshiped full. But do I have to listen to stuff like this? He said, here is a man who is just dealing with God. I don't remember what all else he said, but I was on his side.

And the poor chairman didn't know how to get control of that. But the brother was perfectly right. The man who goes into a huddle with God isn't going into the huddle with the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the mighty Jehovah.

The nearest Isaiah ever got into a huddle with God was when he lifted up and Isaiah cried out, O God, O God, I'm an unclean man. And when Daniel started to huddle, he fell down stoned. And when John saw him, he fell flat on his face.

And every time they neared God in that sense, they always went flat down and said, I am dust and ashes. I am unfit, I am unworthy of my name. But that's the God we want back, brethren. We want God back.

And you say, well, in the Alliance, doesn't it have that kind of God? Well, we have him, but we don't have him. We don't have him. A fellow was out my way and came out this way somewhere, not this district, Brother Joel, Brother McGarvey, but in some other districts.

He said he went to a little Alliance leader, got up and illy prepared, I presume, and he hadn't even looked at the title of the song. And he said, all right, we'll begin this. I am on the rocks, hallelujah.

There are a good many of us on the rocks because the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ isn't here. Our God is a cheap handmade composite of various theological and choruses and ideas and stories we heard evangelists tell.

The glory of God again and the returning of the glory of God to the Church is the primary imperative, absolutely necessary. It is even more important than the salvation of souls. But God has so ordered it that when his glory returns, more souls will be converted as a result.

You have to take your choice. It isn't an either or, it's a both and. And the trying to get souls saved at the glory of God is to cheat God of his glory and not get souls saved anyhow. We just make proselytes who aren't anything else.

Hallowing God's Name Before Human Needs

Now, the first prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, the first corporate prayer, begins, Our Lord, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Jesus said, in other words, the hallowing of the name is more important than anything else.

Therefore always see to it that you pray first at the glory of God. Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. God first, my brethren. We are humanists to a great degree now. Evangelicalism has backslidden until it's humanism with a biblical veneer.

But we want not humanism, we want Christianity, a Bible kind. And Christianity never begins, Christianity begins with God and then looks around for man. But humanism begins with man and then after God.

And we have gotten into that place. We begin with man. It's what man thinks and what man says and what we want to do for man. But the glory of God is first. Hallowed be thy name. And I pray more for this than I pray for us, that the glory of God might be revealed again to this generation, so that the presence of God will be so humiliating to us, so humbling, so wonderful, so glorious, that it'll count, and that all of our thought-up jokes will go down the drain, all of our self-confidential will stand or kneel or fall down in the presence of this holy God and cry, God Almighty.

Now, remember, you can have all your plans you want with the help of all of the advertisers, and you can get the help of all modern mechanics. And when it's all done, you'll fall short unless first glorified in the Church.

Deliverance From the Church's Babylonian Captivity

Second, second, only second to this, but second to it, that the Church should be delivered from her Babylonian captivity. The Evangelical Church today, the Holy and the Apostle Church, the Fundamentalists and the Alliance, that takes us all in, if it doesn't add your bunch, all to Babylonian captivity.

Israel in Babylon did not cease to be God's people, but they were God's will. They were not in the Holy Land, they were somewhere else. And while God kept them and finally restored them, they didn't sing the Lord's song in the far-off land, and they weren't where they should be.

And the Church of Christ, the Babylonian Church, is in Babylonian captivity. We are among the people that speak another language, are learning their ways, are giving up to their mores and their moral codes, and are in desperate need of a restoration, the disgraceful fornication of the Church with the world.

Now, my brethren, until this is accomplished, until there has been a reformation, a restoration that has restored the Church back to her place, back to the Holy Land, back where the Shekinah glory is, back to New Testament standards, evangelism, however it may be promoted, can only resurrect more children in Babylon.

And remember that until we have had a reformation, a restoration, back in the land and the glory of God is shining once more in awesome splendor over us, everybody that is born again and all evangelism, with all its success, is only producing more Jews in Babylon, more Christians that are not where they should be.

And remember, and y 'all get killed for this, but I reckon you'll only die once, until we get restored and the Church gets restored, even our missions won't be successful, because all we'll be doing will be transplanting a scrub Christianity on a foreign shore.

Remember, missionaries, that you can never produce anything better than you are yourself. The Bible will bring forth after its kind, and send a missionary over there with a cheap concept of God, and his head filled with jiggling choruses.

And that's the kind of Christianity he'll produce over there. So all he'll be doing will be transplanting an effete, degenerate Christianity on a foreign shore. So more than we need more, we need a reformation of the whole Church of Christ in America.

And when that comes, then we'll get more missionaries, will be higher, and the result will be that they will produce a higher type of Christian. This sounds strange, I've never heard of it. Aren't all Christians alike?

No, not all Christians alike. Some bring forth thirtyfold, some a hundred, and some shine like the stars in heaven, some big, some little, and some you have to take a telescope to see. And Paul Carno, and others of you are spiritual, and the writer to the Hebrews said that some of you are so near spiritual growth that you need again somebody to teach you the first principles.

So my brethren, it can be a very high type of Christianity, it can be moderate and mediocre, it can be very low. And the kind of Christianity that we have in our Bible schools, Christian colleges, Christian magazines, Bible conferences, and camp meetings, is a degenerate form of Christianity.

It isn't a high, holy, spirit-filled, fire-baptized, God-conscious, gracious, love-enamored thing that our fathers knew, that we knew, even fifty years ago, that the Reliance knew at first. And until we have a reformation, remember that all of our books and our magazines are but the working of bacteria in a decaying church.

That's all. The Reliance witness alone is as spiritual and as good as the people that produce it. And since we belong, the editor and all of us together, are part and parcel of a second-rate, degenerate Christianity.

The magazine is second-rate, and it is second-rate. If we could all of us get back to God, if we could be rich again, if we could cease to be influenced by the radio and television and the newspapers and magazines and time and sports and all the rest, and could become New Testament in the right sense of the word, then you people would be up, and I'd be up, and our churches would be up, and our magazines would be up, and our missionaries would be up, and we'd make converts up in that atmosphere.

You know, some babies are born, and when they're born, you have to put them in what they call an incubator and give them oxygen to keep them going. Others are bounced into the world with a howl and a protest and pound, and from that minute on they're in charge of things.

Well, now, I believe Christians, I believe it be like that. Some Christians barely squeak through. When my brother was born, he was premature, and when he was born, he couldn't hold, his head just wouldn't stay on.

They had to put him on a pillow, carry him around for a long time on a pillow. My wife had seven, and outside of one who was just a little weak, the six of them were born the size and full of life, and they've been ever since.

You can be born in the kingdom of God, either an incubator baby, or you can be born a bouncing, howling baby saying, Abba, Father, before I get your teeth. And that's the kind we ought to have, and pray about, that the glory of God might be revealed again, that we'd quit joking about God, thinking about God in an unworthy manner, that we would elevate God in our thoughts, and that when we speak of God, it would be all in all, and that God should become all in all, and then that his church should be restored again to New Testament pattern.

Self-Examination in Prayer

What do we need to pray about, brethren? I wonder if I've preached my time out. I don't know. No, not quite. I want to talk a little. We don't get a prayer's answer. Some of us are praying like this, and some of you are, and you will be, and more will be, I suppose, after this morning, and you go and do what the preachers tell you to do.

But you know there's a serpent in the garden, and it's the serpent of self, and it twines itself about the most beautiful trees, and it's there to poison your prayers, destroys your prayers. You have not, because you ask to miss, that you might consume it upon your lips.

Now, let me tell you this, my brethren. It's possible to want the glory of God to be revealed, and to pray that the glory of God might be revealed, but at the same time, to want to be the one he uses to reveal it.

See what I mean? It's possible for me to go to my knees and fast, and go to my knees and say, Oh God, let thy glory be revealed to men, and to seek and hope that I'll be the one he uses to reveal that glory.

Well, you know what I'm asking for? I'm asking for a cut of the glory of God, and I'll never get my prayer answer. It's perfectly possible to want the church to be restored from her Babylon, but yet want to be the one that leads her back.

And if you pray like that, you might just well not pray. It's possible to want Jerusalem to be built, but to want to be Nehemiah. It's possible to want prophets of Baal to be defeated, but we have a yearning to be Elijah, and to stand up there and call fire down.

We want a reformation, but we want to be Luther, and to say, Here I stand, so help me God. We want the army of the Lord to win, but we'd kind of like to be a commissioned officer, so that we can ride at the head of the parade.

We want our church to triumph over her foes, but we'd kind of like to be around there working so that when it triumphs, everybody will say we had a part in it. We want our Sunday school to grow, but we also would like to be known as that great Sunday school man.

Under his superintendency, it went from 25 to 39. And now, my brethren, we must elevate our hearts and pray. And here's the way we've got to pray. O God, honor thyself. Do it through me, or do it with me.

Do it apart from me. We've got to pray like that. Otherwise, we're praying selfishly. If God we want to be, want to see restored, then you don't care whether you have any part in it or not. If God wants to restore the glory of God, you've got to pray just as hard and just as seriously as if he was going to use the alliance.

Some of you will never get over that. There'll be heart attacks all over the grounds. But it'll be all right. You'll get over it. If you pray, glorify thyself through the alliance, you might just as well recite Mary's little lamb backwards, because God won't hear that prayer.

Alas, you also are willing that every group should share with it. And if God wants to start somewhere else, he can start. Some of you nice people may have to find you out yet. When revival comes to your town, it may start through some fellow backwards.

And you don't believe it, and you think that he's not nearly as spiritual as you are, because he plans his service and you just bumble for the best. And you call that spirituality. That isn't spirituality, it's laziness.

That's all. The fellow who doesn't plan his sermon and says he's trusting in the Holy Ghost, he's a liar and the truth isn't in him, or else he's too dumb to know what he's saying. The fact that these unplanned services, I preached in one of the largest churches on the North American continent.

I'm not, and I'm going to let you guess, and if you come to me and ask, I won't tell you. But it was one, it is one of the largest and best known fundamentalist church in continent. I preached morning and evening there one time.

Oh, I've preached there a number of times, but this particular time I was there, it was my first time. The morning service was, it was a glorified street meeting, just that. There were about 3 ,500 people present, but it was a glorified meeting.

And I've never respected that church since. My brethren, just coming unprepared, hoping for the best, getting up after the long fishing trip, and you're in Simonizing your car, not preparing. And think about it, that's not spirituality, that's shameful laziness.

Irreverence. Cursed is the work of God carelessly, says the Holy Ghost. Anyway, you've got to pray for revival and then be satisfied to have a gospel priest or a Lutheran pastor. You've got to pray for revival and then have it be willing that they'd skip you if it's the only way you can be saved from selfishness.

You ask and you receive not because you ask immediately upon your lust. I remember the evangelist, he was coming to a certain church and the pastor said, he said, the revival has broken out. And he wired back, hold it till I arrive.

Funny, but it's a long way from being funny, it's tragic. The glory of the evangelist was more than the glory of God. The evangelist probably gets souls converted. You say, but let him alone, brother, he gets souls converted.

Yes, he gets incubator babies born in Babylon. If he was God, he'd get nine pound babies born, he didn't have to put in the incubator, and they'd be back in the land where they belong. Let's get away from this idea that a thing's all right because somebody got converted.

Praying for God's Glory Without Seeking Personal Credit

Perfectly possible for a Jew to be born in Babylon, who was? Well, you've got to be willing to pray, oh God, answer with me or apart from me, but answer God. Glorify thyself in our midst. Send out missionaries, Lord, but two more from another church than you do from mine, I am satisfied.

Send revival, Lord, but if you want to bless the branch across the city first, all right, you got to do that. And maybe if God delights to honor somebody else, maybe God delights to honor another church first, and you'll catch the spill over.

You've got to be willing to pray, fill the walls of Babylon by whomsoever thou wilt rebuild the walls of Babylon. Let me lay a brick if you please God, but if you don't, then I'll stand on the side and rejoice while the wall is being built.

Oh God, restore thy church in my land, but oh God, if you use me, all right, but if you don't want to use me, then I'll be joyous and I'll rejoice to see the church restored. Oh, glorify thyself in our midst, and if you want to use me, all right, but if not, I'll back the man I'll just use, I'll love him, I'll pray for him, and I'll work behind the scenes, and I'll do my dead level best unseen.

We've got to pray like that. Now I want to ask you, can you pray, oh God, at any cost, revive our church, but oh God, at any cost to me, if I have to get kicked out, revive thy church, oh God. It's an awful thought, brethren, that there are churches waiting around for some people to die so they can go forward.

That's an awful thought, and some of you old deacons, if you pray and really something could happen, I don't know what, but maybe you might move to another town. We've got to pray, oh God, bless this church at any cost.

As soon as you put a price tag on, God won't hear. So God bless our church. At any cost, honor thyself in our midst. At any cost, restore our power and New Testament principles, and then you've got to be satisfied for God to use somebody else to do it.

Amen? I haven't had five amens all morning, but it's been just as true shouting amen. What are we going to do? Remember what he said. He said, prayers are but sometimes we pray selfishly and don't get the answer, but nevertheless, devil in the flesh, we ought to pray and not think.

Repentance, Restoration, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance

Correct our faults, get straightened out, pray and not think. So my friends, I've given you my spiritual philosophy. This is what I preach, not only to the Alliance, but I preach to the Presbyterians and to the Baptists and to the Mennonites, independent groups.

Wherever I go, I dare to preach this. One, the glory of God's been lost and our God is a cheap God, hardly worthy of our kneeling to. But the true God, the Father of Jesus Christ, the God of Abraham, is high and lifted up with his train filling the temple.

And we need to get back again to reverence, worship, deeds. Second, the church needs to be restored to New Testament pattern again. Now I want to leave this with you. If the Christian and Missionary Alliance continues to imitate in the backslidden evangelical churches and the cheap, if the Christian and Missionary Alliance continues to imitate them, repent.

In another few years, we'll take on with the backslidden semi-liberals, and God will raise up somebody else to do what we've been sent to do. I'm telling you, I don't think I want to live to see it. I've given everything I've got from the time I was 21 years old to the Christian Church, and I have no intention of leaving it.

And I never criticize it away from it, only when I'm in need. And so I don't know whether I could take it to know that we'd sold out philosophies, carnal viewpoints, carnal gadgets, and had lost the glory.

I don't know whether humanly I could take it or not. But I want God to honor his own name and direction. If he has to go outside of our group to do it, oh, God, do it anyhow. Do it, God, do it. May God forgive us all for praying and hoping and yearning that the Christian Missionary Alliance will be among those who are in the firefalls, blessed when the blessing comes, and restored when the restoration starts, led back to the Lord, when Ezra and Nehemiah lead us back.

I don't know who will lead us back, I haven't met him yet. And many of the great leaders, religious leaders of today are going to be the ones. But God will send his prophets, he always has. Some redheaded fellow running around here covered with freckles and big ears, standing out like taxi cab doors, standing open, oh, that may be the boy.

Somewhere God has his man, and God will raise him up, and there will be revival. Not evangelistic campaigns that cost millions of dollars, but restoration and revival. And, oh, God, send them, send them, send them, send them by whom thou wilt to please the old God, bless the Alliance and help us and help me and let me have a part.

But, oh, God, if you'd rather do it through somebody else, do it, God. But a starved generation that's never seen the glory of God. Do you know it? We have men and women, 20 and older, that have never seen the glory of God.

They're Christian, they're in Bible school, they've never seen the glory of God. They've never known what it is, for the presence of God is so awe-inspiring that you can't speak out loud. They've never heard God so high and lifted up that they went home in silence and wouldn't talk.

Somebody told me, I was hearing Dr. Simpson preach in Buffalo, New York. He preached on the glory of Jesus Christ, and when it was through, not a person got up out of their seat. They sat there in a sense of being afraid to get up and walk around in the presence of God.

But there's a whole generation of our young people that have never seen anything like that. God is too small. O God, restore thy glory, by whomsoever thou wilt restore thy glory.