As for Me, I Give Myself Unto Prayer — Roy Daniel

Commands of Christ and the Sermon on the Mount

Commands of Christ. Matthew 4, 17. And to preach, and to say, Be tense, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Matthew 4, 19. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you teachers of men. Matthew 5, 10 -12.

Blessed are ye which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye with nature of divinity, and persecuting, and shall say all manner of evil against you, falsely, for my sake.

For great is your reward in heaven. For so persecuted were the prophets which were before you. Matthew 5, 14 -16. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither is it crucial, so shine before men, that they may see your good work.

Your father, which is in heaven. 18. The law or the truth fulfilled. For verily I say unto you, One jot or one tickle shall in no while shall all be fulfilled. 25. That thy brother hath fought against thee for the altar.

26. That any man enter thy right eye from thee. For it is possible for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body, and that thy right hand offended thee, cut it off and cast it from thee.

For it is possible for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into the first seven demands of Christ.

Thank you, children. That was a blessing. Amen. So take your hymnals. Turn to number 205. We do have the nursing mothers section set up back here, so you don't necessarily have to go down to the nursery.

It's set up back there if you need to take a little one back there. Good morning. Good morning. I really did a lot of praying and seeking the Lord, because I wasn't for sure what He wanted me to say. And this morning, this was one of the things that I was asking the Lord if this was what He wanted me to share.

Fellowship With God in the Light

This morning, this is actually where I happen to be in my quiet time. So I'll kind of share with you what the Lord taught me this morning and has been dealing with me in this area. But anyway, it's 1 John chapter 1, and I'm going to be starting in verse 1.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life. For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.

That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us. And truly, our fellowship is with the Father, and with the Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.

This, then, is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.

But if we walk in light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. I want to back up to verse 5.

Well, back up to verse 4. This is dealing with having joy. The verse in Psalms says, In thy presence is fullness of joy. And we find that in God's presence is light. And wherever God is, there will be light.

And we find that wherever evilness is, or wherever wickedness is, there is darkness. The two will never meet. It is like water and oil. You mix them together, you are going to be able to tell which one is water and which one is oil.

You take water and water, and you mix it together, and you get water. You take oil and oil, and you get oil. You take oil and water, and you get oil and water. You don't get whatever. You get oil and water.

They will never come together. And if we ever want to have, this is what the Lord Jesus Christ showed me, if we want to have God's presence, if we ever want to have true revival, there must be no darkness.

Or whenever the Spirit of God moves, whenever Christ's presence is shown, the light will be revealed, and the darkness... the light will shine, the darkness will be seen, and we must deal with the darkness that God shows in our lives, or else His presence will not continue to be there.

If we want God's presence, if we want His blessing on our lives, if we want revival, we must deal with the darkness that God will show us. And that's what the Lord is really... that's what the Lord is pressing upon my heart.

We want joy. It's a commandment, you know, to praise the Lord. And you can't really truly do that if you have sin in your life. I mean, that's why Christ came. He said to bless us and turn us from our iniquities.

He came to bless us in that. And we cannot truly experience that if we don't deal with it. Anyway, I pray that it's a blessing to you all. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Rand. Before we go any further, let's go to our Father, to our Lord, in prayer.

O gracious Heavenly Father, You who are the Holy God, Lord, we come this morning to hear Your Word. And Father, I would ask for an anointing of Your Spirit to touch our hearts, Father, that we would be willing to do exactly what Rand said, to deal with that which You revealed to us, Father.

O Lord, we long for Your presence. We long to walk with You, for we know that the times that we walk close to You, it's sweet. It's precious, Father. O may our hearts be in such a state that we would allow nothing to come between us and the Savior.

O Father, there is nothing in and of ourselves that can do the work that needs to be done. So we beseech You, Father, as a merciful God, to come and do the work in us. Father, we submit to You. We submit to Your Word, to Your Holy Spirit.

And we invite You, Lord, to come and do all that needs to be done in each heart here. Father, whatever the cost, do that. For, Lord, You are worth more than we could ever give. And that's the true riches we seek this morning.

It's You. Hear us now, Father, for we ask this in Christ's name. Amen.

Prayer as the Source of Spiritual Power

The father of William Burns spoke to his church, and he said, It's not the gospel that has lost its power, but it's us that has lost our power with God. And little Samuel, my brother, I don't like to lift someone up, but recently he saw a shop in Cape Town, an evil shop that had been there for many years, and he said to his daddy, Why don't we pray for that shop to close down?

And he prayed as they passed, and within a month they passed again, and it was closed down. After many years. I'd like to ask you a question. When you pray, do you have power with God? Does something happen?

I'm going to pray quickly. Lord, I know I'm nothing, and I can't say anything to these people that will ever mean anything. But I ask You to speak, Lord. I ask, Lord, that You would touch the hearts of these people and change their lives, Lord.

Father, I can't do this. I come through the blood of Jesus Christ. And I beg You, Lord, that Thou would speak, Lord. Or this meeting will be for nothing. In Jesus Christ, our Father, Amen. In Exodus, you don't have to turn there, I'm just going to talk about it.

We find in Exodus, I think, 17. The most amazing story of our... The army of God, which was the Israelites, were faced with a massive problem. Because of the Amalekites. A huge army standing in their way of going forward.

And Joshua was put in charge of the Israelites to fight against this huge army. But importantly, on a little hill, there stood three people. Moses, an old man, and with him were Aaron and, I think, Horeb.

And as the Israelites fought against the Amalekites, an amazing thing happened. Every time that Moses' hands were lifted up, the Israelites, the army of God, started to win. But every time he got tired, he was an old man, and his arms went to the ground.

The army of God started to lose. Until eventually, two people held his arms up, and the armies of God crushed the enemy. Now, this just wasn't written in the Bible as a story for children. It was written there as a grave warning to us.

It didn't matter how big the army of God was. The only thing that mattered was those arms lifted up to heaven of one holy man, Moses. You know, there was a very holy man who once said something like this.

Satan laughs when we give out tracts, when we preach, when we go from house to house, as we struggle. But he trembles when we pray. And I was once, this year on my grandfather's farm there in Africa. It's a citrus farm.

There's a lot of bush. And I think it was at the beginning of this year, I took a big stick, and I started to hit the bush. Hit it, and hit it, and hit it. But nothing much happened. In fact, a few twigs fell to the ground, you could say.

And suddenly in my brain, I remembered when I was a little boy. I was a very naughty little boy. And I had a few boxes of matches. And I remember taking one of these matches and lighting a little fire.

And I remember crushing it out. But then that little fire spread fast. And I had to bring in many people to put out that felt fire which I started. And that same bush, many years later, 13 years later in fact, I hit with a stick.

And I tried hard, but nothing happened. And it's the same with many Christians today. They go out, they preach on the streets, they give out tracts. They do so much work, and yet they forget Moses on the hill is the only thing that helps.

It wasn't the armies fighting together that counted. It was that one man on the hill whose hands was lifted up to God. Nothing else counted. There's a verse in the Bible which says, Ephesians 6 verse 12, We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Prayer, Distraction, and the Battle Against Spiritual Powers

In our country, in 1979, a terrible thing happened. I think we were the last country to bring television into our country, of all the western countries. And they said they could make a graph, a line of the moral standards went down and down.

But at that point, where television came in, the graph would go steeper from that point. And you know, funny enough, we don't have a television obviously in our home, but in those days, they didn't have evil things like today to bring the moral standards down.

It was innocent stuff. But you know what brought the moral standards down? It's because people spend less time on their knees, and more time in front of a stupid little box. I was at school. They don't really have much homeschooling in South Africa.

I went to public school there. And at the end of standard 9, which is your grade 11, God allowed a great crisis to come in my life. It started as a small little problem, and it grew and it grew. And I, like most people, we think clever.

We can handle the problem as long as it's small. And I tried my hardest to fix this problem. And the problem grew and grew. It became so bad, I do not know what would have happened if God had not taken me and saved that problem.

But eventually, when I could do nothing, it came to that point. And I lay on the ground in agony before God, and I asked Him to do something. And within a day, He had fixed that problem, which I tried to fix as it grew, myself.

I think it's Psalm 107 says, 107 verse 27,. They reeled to and fro and staggered like a drunken man. And after wit's end, then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distresses.

And you know, I learned something out of that. I learned a very great lesson. I said to myself, from now on, when I'm faced with a small problem, I'm going to bring it to God. I'm going to start at the beginning.

I'm not going to wait until it's a big problem. And I did that. And suddenly the Lord started doing miracles. I'm nothing. I will never be anything. But I began to tremble as I prayed. God answered prayers.

Miraculously. For instance, I would sit in my bed, and the next day, I had an exam at school, and opposite the road, you hear these big parties, I suppose you have them in America, with the boof, boof, boof music.

Terrifying. But I couldn't sleep. So eventually I thought, why don't I pray? I said, God, to Thy glory, I can't do anything. Please stop that music. And then I said, Amen. And it was like this, boof, dee, boof, dee, boof, dee, Amen.

Stop. And I trembled, and I went to sleep. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers. And of course, every one of us, I would have loved to be Daniel, with his great faith.

Daniel's Faith and Trust in God

And you've got these big lines. You say, Lord, please close that line's mouth. It's nice. But I often point out, that Daniel's faith did not start in the lion's den. It started at the food table. And I wonder how many of us actually believe that God blesses our food.

I got excited at my granny's house earlier this year. She thought I was a bit mad, I think. She said, God bless the food. Isn't it wonderful? And I was excited. At a camp there, a Christian camp in South Africa, I once sat in my bed, and God mightily came at that camp.

I wish I could tell you about it, but one of the things that happened was there was lots and lots and lots of mosquitoes. And I found out that you've got them in America too. But this place is impossible.

The mosquitoes are biting you, and biting you, and are swallowing up, and everybody was swallowing up, and they were spraying the doorways and everything. But I was in a little shack outside, where there was a big hole, so all the mosquitoes could come in.

So I got the worst of it. And everybody else was indoors, and they had closed doors, but they were still suffering from these mosquitoes. I don't know where they came from. Must have been a bit like Egypt, these mosquitoes.

But I sat in my bed in the night time, and I suddenly thought, God closed the mouth of those lions, so why can't he close the mouth of the mosquitoes? And I sat there, and I said, Lord, it's well worth a try.

And I prayed, and I asked God, please close the mouth of these mosquitoes. And you know, I never slept so wonderfully in my entire life, I don't think. There was not one bite. The next day I testified about it.

And all the other suffering people said, oh, that's how it's done, some of them said. And I found out afterwards, some of them tried it out, and it worked. But you know, it's funny, people lack power of God so much nowadays, they don't even believe God can close the mouth of a mosquito, let alone, as Daniel could, the mouth of lions.

But I'm a person, I'm not a man of great faith. I often struggle, I'll admit it. But I once walked in the streets, just to walk through the streets, and in South Africa you've got much poverty. I don't know if it's 40 of the population, can't find any work.

And you'll have squatter camps with people living in little parts of your roof put together for a house, millions of people. And I walked in the street and I saw a person sitting there. And I told him about Jesus.

He said, listen, I don't have a job. I said, well, all I can do for you is pray. And I didn't actually believe anything would happen. But I thought it's worth a try. So I prayed for him, and there were a couple of people that I prayed for across the country.

And the funniest thing happened. I didn't have great faith, but these people, they disappeared. After years of being in this place or on that part of the street, and I found out later from at least one of them that they got a job.

Now imagine I'd, even though I had so little faith, imagine I just not prayed. It was only when Moses lifted up his arms into heaven that the Israelites started to win. Now, I've said before that a man said, Satan only trembles when you pray.

And he laughs when you give out tracts and talk about Jesus. I once went to a petrol pump, or you call it a gas station, I suppose, in America, and I spoke to someone about the Lord. And I really had a hard time with him.

I told him about Jesus Christ who died for his sins. You know what he said to me? He said, you white people, you've got your religion. And you always come to me, he said, lots of people that come to him and talk to him about Jesus.

And he got angry with me, and he shouted at me, I think. And I just kept quiet, because I didn't know what to do. But he trembles when he prays. Not that we mustn't give out tracts and talk about Jesus, but if it isn't soaked in prayer, then it's hopeless.

Revival, Holiness, and Clean Hands

I think God longs for one thing, and that his people will get down on their knees and not let him have rest like they did in the Hebrew revival. Not let God have rest or sleep until he makes their Jerusalem a fragment upon the earth.

I once, me and a very godly boy, his name is Glenn Bass, we prayed together a lot. And I've got a friend, a very anointed and wonderful godly man, his name is Mr. Engelbracht. He's a bit old. He's got a church there in South Africa.

And his wife was sick. And he said to me, Roy, please pray for my wife. And we prayed and prayed, but she kept on being sick. Then one day I was on the phone to him. And he said, after I told him about this farm that we went to and how God is moving there in his mercy, mightily, he said, Roy, I've got a new prayer request.

I want you to now pray that the Lord will anoint me. And it was about a week, I don't know, later, I suddenly thought I phoned him again. I said, hello, Uncle Jack. In Afrikaans, it's another language.

Hello, Uncle Jack. And I said, how's Tani? How's your wife? He says, Roy, today she's died. The house is empty. There's no more Tani. And a few weeks after that, he sent me a letter, which I've got here, in which he writes that the Lord has never anointed him before as much as he has anointed now.

Now the Holy Spirit is working mightily in his church. You know something? When you get serious with God, God will get serious with you. He will do anything. God will do anything if you become serious with God.

He will even allow people to die to bring you into a closer walk with him. Are you serious with God when you pray? But now comes up a funny question, which I've asked myself quite a few times. If all we need to do is pray, and pray, and pray to get revival, then why hasn't revival come?

For instance, across Africa, and I think America, there were, this year, a hundred stadiums, these big, I suppose you call them here football stadiums. We have rugby stadiums here in South Africa. They were filled with hundreds of thousands of people.

If you add them all together, who were praying on the same day to God, and revival did not come. Why is it when a few little people prayed to God in the Hebrides, revival came? And when hundreds of thousands of people pray, nothing happens, literally.

The Bible says in Psalm 66, If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord cannot hear me. Like Brother Rand said, if you've got darkness, there cannot be any darkness in your life, if God is to hear you.

God commands, pray without ceasing, pray always, pray everywhere, pray in all things. It's not a choice. But if we regard iniquity in our heart, the Lord cannot hear us. But there's a very dangerous thing that most godly people, or supposedly godly people can do, is they judge themselves according to the world.

And they say they, they are the people, those hundreds of thousands of people in the stadiums, they are the people that regard iniquity in their hearts. They look towards sin. But we must remember David, a very big lesson that David taught us.

When he took that little sheep, when Naaman, I think, told him about the rich man who took the little sheep, and then David said, that man ought to be killed for taking this one little sheep of the poor man.

When he had so many sheep of his own, then the prophet said to David, you are that man. That's what I had to find out in my life. I'm going to ask you a question. Do you have power with God with prayer?

Or do you regard iniquity in your heart? In the Hebrides revival, I'm sure you know a lot about that, the godliest, the godliest people on that island, I believe, prayed for revival for three months, or a couple of months, and nothing happened.

Nothing at all. So one day in the barn, I think there were six men there, he stood up and he said, it's no use us praying to God. And he opened up his Bible, it's Psalm 24, 25. 24, verse 3. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in his holy place?

He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul into vanity, nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive the blessing from the Lord. And these godly, the godliest of that entire island, the people who are praying for revival, they ask God, Lord, do we have clean hands and a pure heart?

And then, and only then, God came down. When they realized that revival doesn't start with those masses of people in the stadiums. It starts here, with me and you. I wish you could know what God would do through holy hands lifted up.

Giving Oneself to Prayer

In South Africa, on my weekend, I'm almost finished now, me and Glenn, if we're not going to some place to give out a few tracts or preach the gospel, we go in our car and we drive around looking for the old people, the godly, the forgotten, people most people wouldn't even worry about.

They've got no money, they've got no influence, but they're godly. And we ask them to pray. And we've got a group of people there praying for us. And I still remember once, earlier this year, at a big town called Boford Vest in South Africa, at 12 o 'clock in the night about, they said to me, Roy, tomorrow you're going to preach.

And that's quite something. I'm not a great preacher. And to top it all, they said you're going to preach in another language. But I knew one thing, these holy people were praying for me. They weren't just any people, they were holy people, sought out.

And I went to that church, and I am nothing, I will never be anything. But I still remember as I stammered through my sermon, how in God's mercy, He came down upon that church to the point that the minister and all the people in the church said, later on, that their lives would change forever.

They were in tears, in agony in that sermon. And it wasn't me, it wasn't a great sermon. It was only one thing. Like Moses was lifting up his hand to God, and the Israelites won the armies of God. So holy old women and old men were praying to God while I preached.

I like when I preach the sermon. Turn to Psalm 108. You know, there's a verse in the Bible which says all things are possible with God, and few things are possible with men. And I'm going to ask you something today, do you believe that?

Because if you believe it, then you will seek God and not yourself, and not your tracks. Not that it's wrong to give up tracks, it's wonderful. If you believe that all things are possible with God, like Moses, you'll be holding up your arms.

Psalm 108, verse 12. Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. And in Psalm 109, verse 4. Be, but I give myself unto prayer. But I give myself unto prayer. And you know how long God longs?

He longs for people who give themselves unto prayer. Give themselves unto prayer. Give their lives unto prayer. He longs for that, because He can't work. He cannot work unless He has such people. Would you like us to bow our heads?

If you would. I'm going to make a little appeal. It's not an appeal to come out or anything like that. And I'm not worthy to make an appeal anywhere in my life. But I ask this, if you want to tell God, just this, if you haven't prayed enough, the time that should have been spent on your knees, is spent playing ball.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. If you've never said to God, I give myself unto prayer. I'd like, if you wish to give yourself unto prayer, and tell God that today, I'd like you to stick up your hand right now.

Okay. I'll pray for you. But before, you can keep your heads down. There's something I've noticed. It has staggered me. It has hurt me. It is this. When people say they will do things, they are often like that parable in the Bible, that Jesus speaks about.

Where the one man said, I will go out. And the other said, I will not. And the person who said, I will not, did it. And the person who said to his father, I will, did not. And I beg you, if you put up your hand today, and I'm going to pray for you now, that you will go after these precious sermons afterwards, and you'll spend some time in prayer with God.

That you'll show God that you are going to give your life to prayer. I'll pray for you now. Lord, I ask thee, in thy mercy, that thou would take these people, Lord, that thou would take their lives, their sacrifice to prayer, Lord, that thou wouldest give them faith, Lord, to move mountains, Lord, mountains of souls into God, and to thee be all the glory.

I ask thee that thou would give them the spirit of prayer. Lord, take their choice, Lord. Take their gift, Lord. Take what they ask, Lord. Take what they say of, I'm going to give myself unto prayer, Lord.

I ask this under the blood of Jesus Christ, Lord. And I'm such a bad prayer myself, that thou wouldest do this, in Jesus' name, amen.

The Instrument and the Voice of God

We've been asking God to come, and when he comes, he speaks. He may just be a boy, but it's still the voice of God, not the instrument. Our tendency is to always want to look at the instrument, but if that instrument will stay like this boy, humble, as God wants us to be, he will speak to us.

Thank you, Roy, for being an instrument. One man on a hill, one woman on a hill, whole army. If they could just keep Moses on that hill, what would it take for God, God to keep us on the hill? Crucify.

Moses had to have help. We have to also. I feel compelled, before Randy comes and gives us some announcements about what we're going to do next, just to pause for prayer. And let's bow our heads one more time.

The Call to Salvation and Surrender

There's another prayer we've had, and that was this, that God would save every soul here. And I just wonder, if you're ready to get saved, if you're lost, are you ready? God's been ready for a long, long time.

I used to preach in the rescue missions and we would sing a song, God's been waiting a long, long time. And the song would go, but you've been running, running, running. How long will you run from God?

How long will you run a fugitive from God? And as we pray, if you would like to right now, just give your heart to Christ. You just do that. He knows how dirty it is. We all that have been saved know what it's like to have a filthy, unsaved heart.

Just tell God whatever you want. Tell Him you're a sinner. You don't shock God. He knew what you would be like when He died on the cross, and what I would be like. But He's waiting for you to quit running and just surrender.

And I'll just ask Him to save you, to cleanse you. Thank Him for the cleansing blood. That holy blood of Christ was shed for you. And if you right now are asking Jesus to save you as a token of your sincerity to Christ, just lift your hand up and say, Jesus, come into my heart now and save my soul.

Everybody keep your eyes closed. This is just between you and God. Just say, Jesus, save me now. And now thank Him. Thank Him for saving you. And never quit thanking Him. You ask Him to come in by faith.

There's nothing you can do to save yourself. And you just thank Him by faith. And you just keep thanking Him for the rest of your life because that's what heaven's going to be full of, people just thanking God, grateful that He saved us.

Thank you, Father, I pray, for any here that just prayed this at this time to ask You to save them. Lord, we are asking You to save every soul that comes to this camp. Thank You for ministering this morning to us in every aspect through the messages, through the singing.

Thank You that You are meeting with us. And we commit now the next session with the ladies with Ginny and the young men and the men with Roy that You would continue to minister to us. God, we've already been blessed so much.

Thank You for this time in Jesus' name. Randy.