Secrets of a Private Prayer Life — Gerhard Du Toit

Entering God’s Presence Through Brokenness and Prayer

Lord, it's wonderful to know that there has been times in the inadequacy of our understanding of the Christian life, that the presence of God has come to us, and you manifested yourself to us. And sometimes in the glimpse of the moment, something happens to us that can change us for time and for eternity.

And the outset of this weekend that we have come together has there been a longing in our hearts to understand the brokenness of heart and spirit? And has there been a longing in our hearts to try to comprehend what you said to us when you said, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God?

And Father, this has been the longing of our hearts. And you have said to us that it is not by might, it is not by power, but you said to us it is by your Spirit. And our hearts, Lord, because you promised that you will pour water upon those that are thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.

And you said to us in your word, on the last day, that great day of the feast, when Jesus stood up and he said, if any man thirsts, let him come unto me, he that believeth into me. As the scripture says, rivers of living water shall flow from the innermost of his being.

And we know that you spoke about your Spirit. Lord, we confess this Saturday night that we cannot work up the presence of God. We can't manufacture this. Father, we can't bring it down. It comes from above.

But in your mercy, you have mercy upon us. And we are so thankful tonight that you have said to us that I dwell with those who are of a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And you have said unto us, this is the confidence that we can have in you, that if we ask anything according to your will, that you listen to us.

And if we know that you listen to us, then we know that we are the petitions, are the things that we have been asking of you. And Lord, there has been a burden in our hearts. And the burden has been that God would come and meet with us individually.

And I thank you that when we speak about prayer, that none of us would ever be able to come to the place where we really know how to pray. Lord, but that we can say to you, it is our desire that you will teach us to pray.

And God, the longing of my heart in this church and in this fellowship here in Malford, is not for us to see a church full of people, but oh God, is to see a church that will be full of people that will be full of God.

And that's the cry of our hearts. We know this Saturday night that the place where it needs to begin is in each and every one of our lives. And we want to draw a circle around our lives afresh and ask you this evening that you would come to visit us in the circle.

Lord, we didn't come to this meeting because we had nothing to do, but deep in our hearts have we come because we really want to meet with God. And so this is the longing. We thank you tonight for your word.

Lord, we love your word. And you have said unto us, is my word not like a hammer that is able to break the rock and is my word not like a fire. And Augustinus used to say that when the scripture speaks, that's when God is speaking.

And we submit ourselves under the authority of your word. And Father, we want your word to become part of our relationships with you. I thank you again tonight for the privilege that it's been for Janice and myself to come here to Malford.

And just for the blessing to pray and to spend time with people and to seek your face and to ask you. And we ask you that somehow that you would break through into the depth of our being. Father God, the mountains that seems to us impossible because you have said to us that I will not give you the land at once.

But you said to us, and I love the Hebrew text, when you said, I will give you the land little by little and slice by slice. And I pray that the breakthroughs of God will come and that you will help us to conquer the land and that we would see the answers to prayer and that we would discover that you answer prayer not necessarily because we are praying, but oh God, that you answer prayer because you are a covenant-keeping God.

And it's your nature to listen to us when we come to you. So thank you, speak to us we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen. Last night when you were with us in our time together, just come and take your seat again, but when you were with us in our time together, we said that what we wanted to do is to spend two evenings or rather two different, look at two different aspects of what prayer is about.

Learning Prayer Through Saturation in God’s Word

So we had one evening that we began to focus on the Old Testament, and if I can be honest with you, you know there is so much in the Old Testament as it relates to prayer, but because of the limitation of our time, I want us just in these last two sessions, tonight and tomorrow night, and tomorrow morning is different to a degree, to concentrate on the New Testament.

Now I want to give you a scenario, brother and sister, and it's this, and I will explain to you why I am saying this to you. But you know they say to us that when a child is born in a house, that during the first six months of the life of this child, that that child will find himself or herself being exposed to millions of different sounds and voices that is taking place in the average household.

And the medical profession is saying to us that from the moment that that baby is born, that during the first six months of its life, all these different voices and sounds is going to take place in that average household.

The voices of brothers and sisters and radio or animals, hour after hour that little life will be exposed to those different voices and sounds. And then they say to us that after a period of six months, something is going to take place in the life of that baby, and that baby is going to be able to begin to discern and distinguish between all the other voices in this household, and the voices of the primary caregivers, which of course is the mother and the father.

And something is going to happen in the life of that child, and the baby is going to begin to say mama or papa or daddy. Now if a child is born in a house, and we are going to say, in the first six months of the life of that child, there is not going to be any sound in the house, and you and I will have the expectation that that child will be able to respond, it just won't happen.

So what are they saying to us? They use a definition that I've come to love, because what they are saying to us is that the process that has taken place in the life of that child has been the process of saturation.

The child has been immersed and saturated in those voices, and the ability has been developed now to discern who is the mother and the father as it relates to the voices of that baby. Why do I use this scenario?

I want to be absolutely honest with you this evening, because I want to speak to the inadequacy of my own heart. There is no way that you and I as a Christian will be able to learn the language of prayer, unless that which God is saying to us in His Word about prayer, unless that becomes part of our lives.

It's as simple as that. Because we've been born with a personality, God is building up Christian character, and He uses His Word. And brother and sister, when it comes to prayer, you cannot go from your experiences with God as it relates to prayer, to the exposition and the truth of Scripture.

You can't do that. Because if you're going to do that, you're going to isolate God's Word, and you are going to let God's Word fit into your experiences, and it doesn't work like that. So what is the secret?

We need to go from truth to experience. And when that becomes part of our lives, it flows out of our relationship with God. And do you know what happens to us? God brings us to the place where we don't pray when we feel like it, but we come to the realization that it's not the times that we spend with God, it's the time that God comes to spend with us in our relationships with Him.

Now you see, on the basis of what I say to you, we have a perfect example in the Scriptures. Do you remember Him? He was the only one that ever was able to say, Father I thank you that you always listen to me, because it is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And you know the beauty of the manifestation of the life of Christ is so great, and we didn't say this to you last night, but you know those eleven rivers that we mentioned last night, that are the eleven Hebrew words that speaks about prayer, three times in the Old Testament, when the prophets in the Old Testament prophesy about the life of the Messiah, were they so taken up with the fact that when He was going to be anointed for service, born as the Son of God, live on this planet for about thirty-three and a half years, but when the time came for the, when He was anointed for service and He started His earthly ministry, that they were so taken up with this concept, that Christ was going to be the manifestation of prayer, that three times in the Old Testament, when they prophesy about the coming of the Messiah, were they so moved by this concept of prayer, that they used one of those Hebrew words for prayer, and they looked upon the life of Christ, and they called Christ a prayer.

And so what happened? He came, and when He was anointed for service, Luke's gospel said He was, and the Greek text is emphatic, He said He was in a spirit of prayer. That's why, brethren and sisters, in the eleventh chapter of the gospel of Luke, those disciples that followed Christ for all that three, three and a half years, they never in their lives as they followed Him, came to Him and said to Him, can you teach us how to preach?

Can you teach us how to win souls? They never even came to Him and said to Him, can you teach us how to become broken? They never did that. The only thing that they ever asked Him, they said to Him, Lord, will you teach us how to pray?

And so what happened to Him? He became the manifestation of prayer. And so what do we discover in the New Testament? Would you have allowed me to say this to you tonight? You will never be able to understand the teachings of Christ as it relates to prayer if you've not come to grips with His own prayer life.

It was a life saturated with the greatness of the presence of His Father. It was so saturated with fellowship and intimacy and the presence of His Father that, brethren and sisters, there were times in the life of Christ that the Father was not able to withhold this.

And the scriptures are saying to us, there was a voice that came from heaven and the voice said, this is my beloved Son, believe ye in Him. I was sharing with our brother who is in the medical profession who comes from Nigeria because, you know, we are both Africans and you know, you can take an African out of Africa, but you can't take Africa out of Africa.

I mean, you are just wasting your time. And I learned to pray on a little mountain in our farm in Africa. A young theological student who was born of the Spirit of God at the end of my first year of studying theology, brought up in a Dutch Reformed Church and, you know, was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church, went through confirmation classes and everything, but I was as lost as anything.

Went to study theology and at the end of my first year, that student who was with me in the same room, challenged me and said to me on a Sunday night, if you die tonight, where are you going to spend eternity?

And I turned to him and said, you know, I must be a Christian. I mean, I'm studying theology. And I said to him, I've been born in a Christian home. He should have said to me, you know, if you were born in McDonald's, never made you a hamburger.

You know, we didn't have McDonald's days in Africa anyway. And I'm still not sure if the ones are safe which there at the moment, by the way. But anyway, he said to me, he said, you know, you need the witness of the Spirit of God.

And I had no idea what he was talking about. And I went alone with God that night and three o 'clock the next morning. It's a terrible thing when you miss heaven by 18 inches, you know. Had it all here, but it was not here.

And God came into my life and I remember, I remember the Tuesday night when I stood up. That was a Sunday night, the Monday when we stood in our lecture room. You know, our testimonies are wonderful because it consists of three things.

That which I was, that which God did for me, and that which I'm looking forward to. And I will never forget the Monday morning when we stood in our lecture room and one of our professors gave us a hymn to sing.

And as he was giving us that hymn to sing, that same student was standing next to me. And as we were singing that hymn, I've never been able to remember that hymn, but I will know it in heaven. But as we were singing that hymn, the witness of the Spirit of God came into my heart.

I remember I sit there and I grabbed his arm like that and he said, what is it? And I said, I'm saved by the grace of God and I know it. But you know what happened? I had to go back to my mother and father.

They were God-fearing people. I mean, they were, they were, they were wonderful people. We prayed every night at the house. We read the Psalms and we would sing and we would pray. And now I got saved and I was converted and I went back to the farm where my mother and father was.

And now it's different. And I couldn't preach to them because I couldn't say to mama, if you are a Christian, this is what you don't do. Because I had a mother that would turn to me and said, I've never done those things.

And I couldn't say to my father, if you are a Christian, these are the things that you do. Because my father would say to me, you know, I've been doing these old things all my life. We used to say in the farm, our dogs wouldn't even bark on a Sunday afternoon, you know.

I mean, that's the way that we were brought up. But we were lost and God saved me. And I will never forget that day. Home for about a week or so and came back from the town about five miles away. Came into the farmhouse and walked into the kitchen and mama, my mother was there.

And I, she said to me, you know, there's a man that wants to see you at a little cottage about 50 yards from our farmhouse. And I said, what do you mean? She said, he's an African pastor. And she said, he's in your cottage.

And I said, why does he want? And she said, I don't know. And I walk into my cottage. And as I walk into this cottage, this African pastor was sitting there, Petros Halipa. As I walk into my cottage, he sat there and I shook hands with him.

And I said to him, we're going to discuss theology. I said, we're going to talk to God. We're going to talk about God. And he said, no. I said, what are we going to do? He said, we're going to talk to God.

And I will never forget this. I mean, you need to be an African to understand this. But I'll never forget this. He just looked at me. He was about 61 years old. He looked at me and he just turned around and he got on his knees and he began to pray.

And for an hour and a half, I was exposed to this life that was intoxicated with God. Just saturated. And as the words were flowing from his lips and he prayed, I was just a young theological student.

I thought, is this possible that someone could have this level of intimacy? Though it was, God was right there. I didn't sit long, you know, I just got on my knees and he prayed for an hour and a half.

Can I be honest with you tonight? It felt like five minutes. He was so under the burden of God. And he knew the secret of systematically dissect the burden of God and systematically persevere and agonize it through to God until the break would come.

And he prayed for an hour and a half. And I was able to understand it, you know, it was Northern Sufi and African dialect. And after he prayed, he just sat down there and I couldn't even look him in the eyes, you know.

And I just turned to him and he said, there's this little mountain in your farm. It's a large cattle ranch. And he said, there's this little mountain in your farm. And he said, there are six of us and we spend days and nights of prayer and fasting.

I said, what do you mean? He said, sometimes we go for 40 days. I said, what do you take? He said, a canister of water and a blanket and our Bibles. He said, sometimes we go for 21 days. He said, sometimes we go for 14 days.

He said, sometimes we go for 7 days. I said, what do you do? He said, we wait upon God. Do you know what happened? He just walked out. I thought I would never in my life see him again. And I will never forget the Friday night.

Waiting Upon God and Persevering in Prayer

Sat in my little cottage, 9 o 'clock in the evening, studying the Word of God with a candle. And as I was studying God's Word, just as I was there, I heard this knock on the window. And I don't want my African friends to misunderstand me, because I know they won't.

But I heard this knock on the window. It was a dark African night. You can't see your hand in front of your face. But you know, I knocked, I knocked on the window and opened the curtains and I couldn't see him.

He said, why not? He was as black as Africa. He said, what did you see? I saw the teeth. All I heard him saying was, umphum disi, muti, muti muukai. And he said, we're going to pray. And he was this young student.

I'm going to spend the night in prayer with these men. And you know, we were walking and they were singing. I mean, they sing just the way that we sing as Africans, you know. And I struggled. How do you spend a night in prayer?

What do you say to God? How do you process long hours of intimacy with God? How do you process it spiritually and emotionally and physically and mentally when this burden of God comes and wants to tear you apart and it just wants to devour every aspect of the relationship that you have with God because it wants to flow through your life and the depth of intercession.

And so we were walking and I thought, how do you do this? And as we walked, Petros Manlipas was right in front of me and I grabbed his arm in the darkness of the night and I said to him, Petros, and he turned around.

I couldn't see his eyes and I'm glad I couldn't because they were piercing to my soul. Turned around and just said, what is it? I said, Petros, how do you spend a night in prayer? I'll never forget this.

He just turned around and he looked at me and he said to me, you've got a big problem. I said, what is it? He said, you are in a hurry and God is not. I said, what do you mean? He said, you're going to learn what it means to wait.

I took my wife and daughter to that spot, you know. Monica was about 13, 12 years old because she often heard me sharing about this. She always said to me, you know, what about these men? And I took Janice and Monica to this little mountain and we stood at the foot of this little mountain.

We called them Kapis and the foot of this little mountain. And I showed them, I said, you see, that's the spot. That's it. That's where it happened. And Janice and Monica turned to me and they said, Daddy, what do you think of those men?

You know what I said to her? I won't see them in heaven one day. She said, what do you mean? I said, they'd be so close to the throne of God, I won't see them. She said, what is it? They walk with God.

That's what the New Testament is about, you know. And you know what Jesus did? He came in the New Testament and they sat at his feet. I want to ask you a question tonight. Because when he prayed at a certain place, one of the disciples came to him.

I always thought it was Peter because you know Peter was the impulsive one. Until I came to the realization it was probably the Apostle John who was the closest to Christ. And when Christ was praying they sat there.

I mean, can you imagine, brother and sister, being a disciple of Jesus Christ and had followed him and come to the realization that every word that came from his lips was backed up by his life. And every single statement that he made, because he said to his father in John chapter 17, when John chapter 17 and he began to pray and he said, Father the hour has come.

He said, glorify the Son so that the Son will be able to glorify you. He was speaking about the glory of the Christ, you know. He said, glorify the Son so that the Son may glorify you. And then he made this staggering statement and he said, Father, he said, glorify me with the glory which I had while I was you.

And you sense the yearning in his heart because he was with the Father and he left the throne of heaven and he became born of man and he lived amongst us. Now the time has come to go back to the Father.

And every one of those 16 Hebrew names of God, that's what he did. He manifested it. And then he said, Father, I've given him the words that you've given to me, which means that every word that came from his lips never, ever neutralized people.

They knew exactly where they stood with him. And now he was speaking to his father. And you remember when he did that? It so affected their lives that one of those disciples came and he said, teach us how to pray.

Hey, can I ask you a question? When last did your children come to you and say to you, Daddy, will you teach me how to pray? When last did someone come to us? Because brother and sister, do you remember what Jesus said at the end of the Gospel of John?

He said to those early disciples, he said, as my father has sent me, he said, so sent I you. And they couldn't hold that and they said, teach us, teach us to pray. And that's what he did. He taught them out of the depth of the intimacy of his own relationship with God.

And do you remember what he did? Ah, it's wonderful. Eight principles came out of those 7 ,957 verses of the New Testament. Out of those verses of the Gospel came out of his life. That was his teachings on prayer.

You say, how can I discover him? You need to go to his prayer life. And when you look at those eight principles, you know what you discover? They were based on eight Hebrew words that is speaking about waiting upon God.

You see, when these black men, these pastors said to me, we go for 40 days and we wait in the presence of God. And I thought, how do you comprehend 24 hours of 40 days just waiting in the presence of God?

And I would say to them, what happened? And they said, we wait. And they said, the burden of God would come and it would wash through us. And we dissect it little by little. And we pray it through. And then there are times that we rest.

And there are times that we worship God. And there are times that his presence is so real. And then they say new strength would come. And another aspect of the burden of God would come. So he spoke about waiting.

Can I ask you a question tonight? You know, Dr. Samuel Chatwick said, hurry is the death of prayer. Have we lost the art of waiting? It's lonely, you know. They that wait upon the Lord, they shall renew their strength.

Why would they do that? Because they will mount up with wings as eagles. What does that mean? They're going to be on their own. They will run and not be weary. And they will faint. And they will be strengthened.

And he spoke about the life of intercessory prayer. So here Jesus comes in. Do you know what he did? He began to teach us how to pray. And brother and sister, he did it in wonderful ways. Let me share with you one of those aspects tonight.

Christ’s Teaching on Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount

You remember in the sermon on the mount, Christ came. What did he do in the sermon on the mount? He came and he said to them, I did not come to destroy the law. Where did I come? I came to fulfill it.

And they would sit there and they would say, but what do you mean? And then Paul comes in Romans chapter 8 and he said, there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who live not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

Why did he say that? He said, for what the law could not do, and it was death through sin. Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh. And what did he do? He destroyed sin in the flesh. Why? So that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh or the spirit.

And here comes the statement. He said, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin. You know what happens when the Holy Spirit comes? Brother and sister, this Holy Spirit brings the law of the spirit of life.

Tomorrow morning we're going to look at that. Because every time when he said, bless it, he said, I want you to be restored to the fullness of the spirit. And when he said, blessed are the poor in spirit, you know what he said?

He said, here are the consequences of a life being saturated with God. You're going to have poverty of spirit. You're going to be pure in heart. You're going to hunger and thirst after righteousness. You're going to long for purity in your relationship with God.

And you know what he did in chapter six? He spoke about three things. He said, when you fast, this is not the way to do it. He said, when you give, this is not the way to do it. But you know what he does?

He said, when you pray, he said, this is the way it's going to happen. And brother and sister, we've got this thing so wrong, you know. Because he did not give us that prayer to repeat. He says it's wrong to repeat.

I'm not saying that. But you say, why do you say that he did not give us that prayer to repeat? Because what he said in Matthew chapter six is different to what he said in Luke chapter 11. So why did he say that?

Do you know what he did? This is how I see it. It seems if Christ came and he was sitting on the mount and the disciples came to him and here he was teaching them. 47 times in the four gospels, Christ was involved in teaching and preaching.

24 times he was preaching and 23 times he was teaching. You say, what is the difference? Why did he do that? Preaching challenges the will and teaching informs the mind. And so that's what he was doing.

And when he preached, he was preaching for a verdict. But when he was preaching, he was pouring into their lives and the fullness of the Spirit of God, biblical concepts of truth about his own life. And he said, when he becomes part of your life, it's going to flow.

And that's what he did. And so when he came and he gave him what we have as term called the Lord's Prayer, you know what he really said? He said, when you discover me within me, you are going to discover the secrets of developing this personal private prayer life.

And so what did he do? He spoke about the pertinence of time. He said, when you going to do that? He spoke about the place. He said, you are going to go into your closet. He spoke about the priority. He said, you are going to discover this.

Because before you spoke about the priority, he said, I speak about the fatherhood. You are going to say, Father. And he used the Aramaic word, Abba. He said, after the fatherhood of God, everything else here is going to flow.

Because there is going to be a priority. He said, what is the priority? He said, you are going to say, our Father which is in heaven. You are going to be like Robert Murray McChain when he said, I want to live as close to God as is possible for a sinner saved by grace.

And he said, I want to live on the edge of eternity. He said, that is going to be a priority. Do you know what he said? He said, you will discover my plan and my program. He said, you are going to say, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be my name.

My program is that there is no power without purity. If you are not going to know the holiness of God, and if you are not going to live a life where I have cleansed you from all the conscious sin in your life, and I am consistently cleansing you, and I am consistently filling you up with my spirit.

He said, you are not going to know the secret. You see, you will never understand the life of prayer if you don't understand the life in the spirit. Robert insisted. It is utterly impossible. So Christ came and that is what he did.

And he said, you are going to discover my provision. You are going to say, give us our daily bread. Nothing to do with food in one sense of the word, if I may say this. It had everything to do with the fact that he is the bread of life.

He is the manna. You are going to discover the strength of him. And he said, you are going to discover my pardon. You will discover the beauty. You know, this is one of the most beautiful aspects of developing a personal and private prayer life.

You say, what is it? It is the repentance of a believer. You say, am I speaking about sin and fault worth and deed? No, no. The spiritual life goes deeper than that. But you know what happens to us? We come short of the glory of God.

And when we come into the presence of God, Robert insisted in the place of prayer, you know what happens to us? We discover the depth of the depravity of our need of God and humility. And we humble ourselves before God.

And when we humble ourselves before God, the beauty of cleansing comes and the freedom with a broken spirit comes to come into the presence of God. And Jesus said, you are going to discover that. And then he said, you will discover my protection.

Prayer, Temptation, and the Protection of God

Because if you walk with me, temptation will be a reality. But if you walk with me, it will come as a result of the permissible of God. Because when the brutality of temptation comes, which God just speaks of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye.

No, no, no. It is five words in the Greek language. It speaks of physical suffering, emotional suffering. It speaks of the agony of the attacks of the evil one. And Jesus came and he said, through my permissive will, when that happens, you are going to discover that you can't do anything without me.

And you will find the definition of what temptation is. You will discover the process. You will discover the victory when you come to this place in your relationship. He said, what did he do? He was teaching them how to cultivate the life of prayer.

Our time is virtually gone. Can I share one thing with you? It's beautiful. I love it so much because, you know, the Gospel of Matthew is predominantly, and I don't mean it, I don't mean it wrong, but the Gospel of Matthew is predominantly Jewish.

You say, what do you mean? It just means there was an emphasis upon Jewish disciples. Like the Apostle Paul, in his Ephesians, you know, to the Corinthians, it was, it is to us, secondary, but predominantly it was to the Corinthians.

But it's suppliable to us. That's his saying. And here, in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, he concentrates on them. He's speaking to Jewish disciples. They sat at his feet. And do you know what he said to them? He said, when you want to develop a personal intimacy with me, he said, when you want to come to the place where it's not the time that you're going to spend with me, it's the time that I'm going to spend with you.

He said, this is how it works. He said, you're going to need to find a place where this happens. He turned to the disciples and what did he say, brother and sister? He said to them, and I love the old translation, you know.