Prayer Summit - Part 2 by Gerhard Dutoit — Gerhard Du Toit

Abram's Communion With God in Genesis 18

The Bible says in the Lord, And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abram that thing which I contemplate to do, seeing that Abram shall surely become a great and a mighty nation, and that all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?

For I know Abram, that he will command his children and his household after them, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, so that the Lord may bring upon Abram that which they have spoken of him.

And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will now go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is common to me, and if not, I will know.

And the men turned their faces from them and went towards Sodom, but Abram stood before the Lord. And Abram drew near and said, Will thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there will be fifty righteous in the city.

Will you also destroy and not spare the place for the sake of those fifty righteous that is therein? That be it far from you to do after this manner, to slay those who are righteous with those that are wicked, and that the righteous should be looked upon as the wicked.

That be it far from you shall not the judge of all the earth do that which is right. And the Lord God said to Abram, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all of that place for their sake.

And Abram answered and said again, Behold, now I have taken upon me to speak unto God, which I am but dust and ashes. Maybe there shall lack just five of that fifty righteous. Will you destroy all of that city for the lack of just that five?

And God answered him and said to him, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. And he spoke unto him once again, and he said, Now maybe there shall be just forty found there. And God said to him, I will not do it for the sake of forty.

And Abram said unto him, Oh, don't let the Lord God be angry with me, and I will be able to speak once more. Maybe there shall be thirty be found there in the cities. And God said, I will not do it if I would find thirty.

Abram said, I've taken upon myself to speak unto God. Maybe there shall be twenty found there. And the Lord God answered him and said, I will not destroy it for the sake of twenty. And he said, Oh, let not the Lord be angry.

I will not. I will speak yet but this once. Maybe there shall be ten found there. God said to him, I will not destroy it for the sake of the ten. And Abram went his way. And as soon as he had left communion with Abram, Abram returned, and the Lord went his way.

And as soon as he left communion with Abram, Abram returned unto his place. You know, this incredible scenario that is given unto us, in fact, from the medical profession, and what is happening is that they say to us that when a child is born in a house, that during the first six months of the life of that child, that what is happening to that child is that that child is exposed to millions of different sounds and voices in the first six to eight months of the life of this baby.

And then they say to us, the voices of other brothers and sisters, you know, a radio or all these kinds of sounds in the house. And then they say to us that after a period of six months, something has happened in the life of this baby.

And they say to us that what has happened in the life of this baby, because this child has found itself being immersed and saturated into these different sounds, something is taking place in the life of this child.

And after a period of six months, the child has been able to say or utter the first two words that would come from the lips of that child. And of course, you and I know which words those would be. It would be mommy and daddy.

And the reason why it would be mommy and daddy is because the primary caregivers was the mother and the father. And it was the mother and the father that spent most time with this child. And so this child began to respond and this child is beginning to say words and being able to learn.

Learning the Language of Prayer Through Saturation

You know, if a child is born in a house and we would say during the first six months of the life of this child, there is not going to be any sound, any noise in this household that is taking place. And we will have an anticipation that the child will be able to respond and say the first few words.

My brother and my sister, it's just not going to happen. So then the medical profession come to us and they give us an incredible definition as it relates to this. And this is what they are saying. They said what has happened in the life of this child is that the process of saturation has taken place.

The child, if I may use this word, has been bathed or baptized or immersed in that atmosphere of the vocabulary of a communication and the consequences of that. Now the child is beginning to speak. Now you sit here this morning and say, why would you start a scenario like that?

You see, here is the reality, my brother and sister. The only way that you and I, and I'm speaking to myself, the only way, it's great to speak to yourself as long as you don't answer yourself. The only way that you and I would be able to learn the language of prayer is when that which God is saying to us in His Word about prayer, when that becomes part of our lives.

And we said this during the weekend. The reason why we are saying that, you see, 75 of your growth as a Christian is determined by what you read and what you expose yourself to. And we said numerous times over this weekend that we are born with a personality, but God is in the process of building up Christian character.

And so what needs to happen to us is that that which God is saying to us in His Word about prayer, that needs to become part of our Christian character. And brother and sister, the consequences of what we are dealing with is that we come to a level of intimacy with God where we don't pray when we feel like that, when we don't pray when there is just a crisis that is taking place, when we don't pray when there is a huge situation that is coming our way, but it becomes a reality and it becomes a part of our lives.

And we learn this concept of intimacy with God where any time of the day or any time of the night, God can give us a burden. People often say to me, because you know the Apostle Paul said in the New Testament, pray without ceasing.

And people come to me in all these countries where we have the privilege of going to, and they make this statement, they say, hey Gerard, you know, the Bible Paul said pray without ceasing. And they say, so does it mean that he spent 24 hours in prayer?

And I say, no, no, I don't think so. And so they say, so why would he say pray without ceasing? And I say, you don't understand. There was a spirit of prayer resting upon his life. I think I mentioned on Saturday morning as we were coming together about this man, George Mueller of Bristol, the man who had 85 ,000 answers to prayer, and they had 35 ,000 answers in 24 hours, and the longest that he prayed for someone was 63 years.

And you say, when did the person become a Christian? Three weeks after George Mueller died. In fact, you know, people don't know this, but there was a man with the name of Charles Adams Spurgeon. You've heard that name, Spurgeon, haven't you?

Charles Adams Spurgeon was a prince of preachers, and Spurgeon struggled with personal prayer. He didn't have difficulty to bring people together to pray, but in his own personal life, it was an absolute disaster in learning how to pray himself.

And this man, George Mueller of Bristol, came alongside Charles Adams Spurgeon, and he began to teach Charles Adams Spurgeon how to pray. And Charles Adams Spurgeon, when God poured out upon him his spirit of prayer, it was so immense, and it was so incredible, and it was so precious in what happened in the life of Charles Adams Spurgeon that when he began to pray, the consequences of that...

Ah, we've got another late comer, and you're going to sit right here. No, you're fine, my brother. I'm always doing this to strangers. Who are you? My name's Harold.

I am glad to meet you, Harold. Likewise. You're not late, you're just in time. We are early, okay? So here we are. The next guy's going to come in like, isn't that awful? I won't do it to you. We just put him in the kitchen.

Spurgeon's Prayer-Filled Ministry

So here we are. So you say, what was the secret of Charles Adams Spurgeon? Well, I'll tell you what it was. When George Mueller of Bristol taught him to pray, and he began to learn the secret of getting through to God, brother and sister, it was unreal.

You know, he would speak to 6 ,000 people on a Sunday morning at Spurgeon's tabernacle, and when he was preaching, Spurgeon made the statement, and he said, I sense the wind of the Spirit of God in my wings.

And as the unction of the Spirit of God would come upon the life of Spurgeon, 6 ,000 people would leap to their feet, and they just stood there in absolute awe. And they were asked afterwards, they said, why did you rise to your feet?

And they say, when he was preaching, you know, Jesus said, the words that I speak to you, they are Spirit and they are life, and when this unction of God came upon Spurgeon, and they said, when we sense there's something that we can't define or explain, but we know when it was not there, when we sense there's something upon him, they said, we rose to our feet, and we stood there, and we listened, and they said, why did you do that?

And these people said, we rose to our feet because we were afraid that we would miss one word that would come from his lips. And you know what happened to Spurgeon? He taught his people to pray. Someone came to him one day and said, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, what's the secret of your ministry?

Do you know what he said? It's the heating system of my church. What do you mean? He said, come on Sunday morning. They came on Sunday morning, and they took him into the basement of a church, and there were 400 people under the burden of God in prayer.

Prayer as the Bridge Between the Old and New Testaments

So what are we dealing with? It needs to become part of our lives. Now here's our problem when it comes to prayer. You see, the Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament. And the New Testament is hidden in the Old Testament.

And brother and sister, if we don't see this incredible connection, if we do not realize that the understanding of intimacy of God in the Old Testament laid the foundation of the possibility of the intimacy of God in the New Testament.

So let me try and cover a number of things, and then we plunge into the developing of the prayer life of Abram. You see, the books of the Old Testament are fascinating because there's different aspects of prayer that come to the surface.

When you look at the first five books of Moses, and you look at this understanding of prayer, you discover that there's a uniqueness about the understanding of prayer as it relates to statements that came, the one that we just found in the life of Abram when the Bible says, and Abram stood before the Lord.

And so in the book of Genesis, as it relates, or in the first five books of the Old Testament, there is this understanding that people came and they stood before the Lord. Now the Hebrew concept of the fact that they came and they stood before the Lord is not an understanding that they just came and stood before the Lord.

It was an understanding that God created in their hearts a hunger and a desire. Because here is the secret, for instance, in the life of Abram. God made a statement, and I love this. He said, can I hide from Abram that which I contemplate to do?

And it brings to us the essence of the first five books of the Old Testament. You say, what does he do? It brings us to the incredible perception that he's the initiator of prayer. Oh, you know, you and I can get ahold of a statement that came when Adam and Eve sat in the Garden of Eden, and we said in some of these sessions that when God created Adam and Eve and he created them body, soul, and spirit.

And why did he do that? He gave them, Dr. Andrew Murray said, he gave them a body to make them conscious of their environment through their senses. And then he gave unto them a soul. And these are three distinctive words in the Hebrew and the Greek language.

And he gave them a soul. Why did he give them a soul? To make them conscious of themselves. You see, when we become Christians, we discover our identity in Christ. And then he gave them a spirit. So why did he give them a spirit?

He gave them a spirit so that he can make them conscious of himself. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And in his creation of Adam and Eve, and the incredibleness that they were his creation, the amazingness that they were his responsibility, that in his righteousness and in his love and his omnipotence and his omnipresence, when he said, let us make man in our likeness and after our image.

I mean, can you imagine the excitement in the heart of God to look upon this planet, this little dot in the realm of the atmosphere and this world that he has created and choose this little planet called Earth and said, let us make man after our likeness and after our image.

And then he created Adam and Eve, and he said, when I create them, he said, I'm going to put them in the Garden of Eden. Can you imagine the reality in the heart of God as he looked at his creation and he said, it was good, it was very good.

And then he came day by day. He wanted to see how they were doing. They were brilliant people, Adam and Eve. They had huge responsibilities in the Garden of Eden. They had to give names to the animals.

And this precious, beautiful creation that he had there. And then when the Hebrew language said, he said, he came in the cool of the evening, the Ruach. I love the Hebrew language, you know, because it relates to intimacy with God.

The Hebrew language is fascinating. A word came into being and then there is a manifestation and the manifestation caused the development and the discovery of vocabulary that created another word. You say, what are you trying to say?

Let me explain to you. You see, when we say God is the initiator of prayer, it means it's not the times that we now want to spend to Him. Brethren and sisters, I don't know what we've done to prayer in the church for probably the last century when we've come to people and we spoke about Him, about the sin of prayerlessness, which is relevant and which is real, but we have taken an emphasis and we put such an emphasis upon the sin of prayerlessness that we've lost the emphasis on the sanctity of the relationship.

What God is saying is that if you have an encounter of me, you won't have a difficulty speaking to me because I'm the one that's going to initiate it. I'm the one that's going to pour out in your life a spirit of prayer.

And the beauty of vocabulary when we say that God is the initiator of prayer is, you know, the life of Moses. You know, Moses spoke to God 104 times. God spoke to Moses 104 times. Do you know how many times Moses spoke to God?

A mere 25 times. Brethren and sisters, it was all about God. Can you imagine being Adam and Eve? Being in the Garden of Eden, every time evening God came in, the cooler the evening. Adam, how are you doing?

Eve, what's happening? This is incredible fellowship. Oh, you said, Gerard, can you give me the best example of a glimpse of the glory of the reality of what it must have been like when God came to speak to Adam and Eve.

They were sinless. They were innocent. They had a perfect human nature. They were indwelled by a spirit that God gave them. God came and had communion with them. Can you give us a glimpse of what those evenings must have looked like when God came to have fellowship?

And I can imagine God came, you know. You say, how do you think He came? I think He probably came in the realm of His Son. I don't know. He came to have fellowship and there was no sin. He came to have fellowship and there was total transparency.

He came to have fellowship and there was total honesty. He came to have fellowship and probably Adam and Eve would say, I gave this animal a name and I called him a lion. And he's not a killer. He's not an animal of prey.

Because you are in this perfect creation of God. Now you study the prayer life of Jesus and you will discover if you can ask God to give you some glimpses in the depth of what His intimacy with the Father is all about.

Discover that there is moments and He gives you a little glimpse of probably what happened there. Unbroken communion. An absolute sense of reality. Can you guys come in the other way? Sorry. Can you close that door?

Because we keep on getting interrupted. No, sorry. Not that. Listen. Thank you. He's my African friend. I can say to him what I want. Thank you so much. We speak a different language. Here we are. Absolute fellowship in the presence of God.

Isn't it wonderful if we are Christians, if there's a restoration where we can experience that? Now let me explain to you something. We talked about the word Ruach. You know Moses, we said a few minutes ago.

You may be sitting here saying, you know Gerard, you really are terrible. You make a statement and then you take off. And I don't know if you ever come back to it. I do it for a reason. I just want to keep your mind thinking, you know.

The Holy Spirit and the Initiation of Prayer

Now listen, let me come back to Moses. You know the word Ruach? You know there's a Hebrew word in the Old Testament and it's the word Rayach. And you say, where does it come from? It comes from the word Ruach.

You say, how does this happen? Let me explain to you. Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights in the presence of God. And you remember as he spent 40 days and 40 nights in the presence of God, the Bible says, he did it twice, and the Bible says that when Moses came down from the mountain, this incredible thing happened with Moses.

And the consequences of what happened with Moses is that the Bible says his face was so full of the glory of God that Brahm insisted they had to put a veil in front of his face. They couldn't face it.

You couldn't face the people. Now you say, where does this word come from? What is this word? It's the Hebrew word Rayach. You say, where does this word come from? It comes from the Hebrew word Ruach.

So here is the beauty of what we are dealing with. So if you and I say God is the initiator of prayer, we need to come to grips with the Holy Spirit. Because the only way that we will be able to come to grips with the Holy Spirit as it relates to prayer is when we understand the work and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

So let me go stay in the Old Testament for a sec, and then let's just pop into the New Testament and try to find out that when the New Testament is speaking to us, why do we say that the New Testament lies hidden for us in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is revealed for us in the New Testament?

Now listen to this. The prophets in the Old Testament, they come with a statement and they say, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. And when they say the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, this is what happened.

They said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and the Spirit of the Lord moved me. Now I love this word move, because it's the same word in the Old Testament language. When the Bible says, when God said in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and He said the earth is without form and void, and then it says the Spirit of God is moving upon the waters.

Now the expression that comes, or the picture that is coming, is like that of an eagle which is stirring over reality. Now we come into the Old Testament, and God made a statement. And this is what He said in the prophet Zechariah.

God said, what will happen in those days? He said, in those days, He said, I will pour out upon them the Spirit of supplication, the Spirit of grace and the Spirit of supplication. So now we want to understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit as it relates to Christ.

Christ's Anointing and the Spirit of Prayer

So allow me to go into the New Testament so that we can try and make this incredible connection. I remember when Christ came. Oh, I love this. Sinners in His birth, supernatural in His life. And as a result, I mean, He was the Son of God from the moment that He was born.

You know, my daughter Monica, she was still a student studying theology, and one of the things that she had to do was to go to Africa and do a mission trip. And she went into Tanzania to a mission station called Baruka.

And as she was there, there was a Bible college, and the Bible college asked her one morning to come and give a testimony. And she went and she gave a testimony to these Bible college students in Tanzania.

And after she gave it, the principal of this Bible college came to the missionaries, and they said, we want to ask something. He said, what is it? They said, we want to ask if Monica could come and lecture to the students.

She's just a student. And so she got in touch with me on Skype. She said, hey Papa, you wouldn't believe what's happening here. And I said, what? And she told me what happened. She said, what do you think I should do?

I said, go and sit in the dust before God. She said, why do I have to do that? I said, Monica, this is amazing and it's incredible. And I said, what are you going to lecture on? She said, I'm going to lecture on the humanity of Christ.

Even Bible college students. And for goodness me, I haven't even tried doing that. I said, are you serious? She said, yeah, I'm going to lecture. And she said, I have a question for you. I said, what is it?

She said, Jesus Christ was God from the moment that he was born. She said, that's what I believe. I said, that's what the Bible says. And she said, he was God up to the moment that he was anointed for service.

I said, absolutely. I said, he was sinners in his birth and he was supernatural in his life. And she said, I'm going to spend nine hours speaking about that. I mean, it just about blew every second of my mind.

A 21, 22-year-old kid doing that. You see, when the spirit of God came upon the Lord Jesus, it was a spirit of prayer. Now, brethren and sisters, you need to understand something. You see, in our lives, we don't realize it that when we became part of the family of God, when we received the Holy Spirit of God, and I don't know how we have missed this concept, when we became part of the family of God, from that moment on, when I'm indwelled by the Holy Spirit, in my life, resident, that wants to become president, is there a spirit of prayer?

And it needs to be developed. And it needs to be cultivated. So let me just take you to a few New Testament passages and then we see if we can make the connection between them and the Old Testament. Can I tell you, last night, you know, if you were with us, we looked at Hebrew, we looked at Luke chapter 11, and I made the statement that Jesus said, after He gave the instruction, and then after He gave us the instruction, He gave us the illustration, and then after the illustration, He gave us the application, when He said, ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened.

And we came to the place where we said, these are three dimensions of learning the language of prayer. And then Jesus made the statement, and this is what He said, He said, if you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children.

He said, how much more shall your heavenly Father keep on giving the Holy Spirit to those that keep on asking? That's the only place in the Scriptures where He speaks about, keep on giving the Holy Spirit as it relates to prayer.

Developing a Continual Spirit of Prayer

And my question to you this morning is this, have you ever asked God to give you a spirit of prayer? You see, when we said earlier on, the Apostle Paul, when he said pray without ceasing, and people said, did he spend 24 hours in prayer?

I said, no, he didn't. I mean, he was a tent maker, he traveled, he was a missionary, he planted churches, and all of those kind of things. You know, if you study the life of Paul, I don't think there were two weeks in his life that someone didn't try to kill him.

And he came and he said, pray without ceasing. And people say, so Gerard, does it mean that he spent 24 hours a day in prayer? I said, no. They say, what does it mean? I said, there was a spirit of prayer resting upon his life.

And then they say to me, how do you know when a spirit of prayer is resting upon your life? But you know what I say to people? I make a statement and I say to them, this is how I know it in my own inadequate life, that there is a spirit of prayer resting upon my life.

They say, how? I say, when anyone can ask me any time of the day and night to pray with him, and I will not feel uncomfortable. If you ever ask God for a spirit of prayer, you better watch it. We have these Bible studies in Chilliwack, out in British Columbia, about 24 -25 young adults who came and studied the Scriptures.

I took 12 weeks with them on how to lead a soul to Christ. When we came to the last week, I turned to this group, and I said, is there anyone of you here that hasn't been born again? And there was this fellow, Frank, who was part of the Church of England.

And he sat there and he said, I listened to all of this, and he said, I don't think I'm saved. And that night, in that final Bible study, I said, Frank, do you want me to lead you to Christ? And all these young adults, young Christians were there.

And in our presence, I had the joy of leading them to Christ. And they actually saw it happen. And it was the greatest thing. But you know, I don't understand this. In that Bible study group, there was an elderly lady.

She was in her 80s. Her name was Margaret Patterson. She was an amazing piece of human flesh. Oh, man, you know, God has got some funny people here.

And many of them, they're not a fawn of the flesh, but boy, they can be a pain in the neck. They're precious, you know. And little Margaret Patterson,.

She was in her 80s, and she would always ask me these piercing questions. And as we were going through it, and then Margaret's hand went up, and she said, hey, Gerard, I have a question. And I said, what is it, Margaret?

And she said, and you never do this, but I walk right into it. Have you ever made a statement, and as you give someone an answer, it's like those things we have as children, you know, you blow them up, and then roll them back.

And she asked me this question, and I was giving her the answer. And as I was giving it, I was trying to figure out a way to get it back without her figuring out. She said, what is the question? She turned to me, because we spoke about the spirit of prayer, and she said to me, oh, Gerard, I want to ask you a question.

I said, what is it, Margaret? She said, what is the best times for you to pray in the morning? And I should have just kept my mouth shut. And I said, you really want to know? And she said, what is the best times?

And she really pushed me. And I said, well, my best times is between 5 and 8 o 'clock in the morning. You never say that. She said, why do you say you never say that? I said, because you just said it.

That's okay. Anyway, this is what I said to her. And you know what? I came out of Chicago, did a conference, flight came in about 1 or 2 o 'clock in the morning, landed in Vancouver, and got back, got the vehicle, and drove to my house.

And I came into the house, and Janice was fast asleep with Monica, and I walked quietly into the house and put my stuff down, and I just put my pajamas on, and I came in. I didn't want to wake anyone up.

And yet, it was about 2 o 'clock in the morning.