Draw Near to Your Father as a Dear Child — Hans R. Waldvogel

Prayer as the Way to Heaven and Salvation

I think Madame Guyon makes the truth when she says, don't let anybody think that he can get to heaven without prayer. Now I think most of our fundamental preachers and brethren would call that heresy.

But prayer is salvation, and salvation is prayer. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is prayer, and prayer is the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Fellowship with God the Father and the Son is prayer, and prayer is fellowship with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Learning to Pray Through the Holy Spirit

But only the kind of prayer that God works, we know not what to pray for as we ought. That's where God Almighty starts us out. You don't know anything, you're as green as grass. And now let me teach you how to pray.

Lord, teach us to pray. They saw something in the prayer of Jesus that was different. He didn't hang up his family wash when he wanted something from God. He just looked up and said, Father, and Father looked down and gave him what he wanted.

My goodness, what a dictation we have to make to God. How we have to tell him that he made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and how there's no grass on Mars growing, and so on, and so on, and we tell him what he ought to do.

And Jesus Christ had tremendous power in prayer. There was immediate contact. And now they say, Lord, teach us to pray. Oh my God, I'd rather pray than preach. The devil trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees.

He's not afraid of your preaching. Oh, how proud we become when God uses us a little bit. But more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. And here the Lord Jesus Christ, the only teacher on prayer, opens his heart to his disciples.

And what positive teaching he gives us. How much more, how much more. My, how people struggle for the baptism in the Holy Ghost, and why don't they get it? Why? Because they don't want the baptism. They want speaking in tongues.

They want signs and wonders. They want the shakes or something. But how much more is God desirous to make a son out of you? We have become heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. And when Jesus teaches us to pray, he teaches us to appropriate our inheritance.

Seeing the Believer’s Inheritance

And in order to appropriate our inheritance, we first have to get a sight of it. You remember when Sundar Singh was saved and he told his father that he had accepted Jesus, his father was beside himself and he thought he could knock that out of his son.

Son was 15 years old. So, before they poisoned him, they finally poisoned him, tried to kill him. But before they did that, they thought they could somehow win him back to heathenism. And his uncle took him down into a vault underneath father's home.

And the son had never been there. Sundar Singh had never been there. And he came into these vaults and this uncle opened, one safe after another. And before the astonished vision of Sundar Singh, he showed forth wealth upon wealth, fortune upon fortune of jewelry, of money.

A wealth that would have made him a multimillionaire. And he said, son, all this is going to be yours, if you recant your faith in Jesus Christ and come back to Buddha. Now the Lord Jesus Christ opens the treasures of heaven.

Thank God. In order to make us see our inheritance, that we might have anointed eyes to see what is the exceeding greatness of his inheritance. To us. The exceeding greatness of his power to us were to believe.

Oh, now prayer assumes an entirely different slant. I thought prayer was a religious exercise. I thought I had to sweat a little bit and make a lot of words. Instead of that, God opens his treasury and he says, now come and help yourself.

That's prayer. First of all, the baptism, the fullness of the Holy Ghost. And God doesn't say now you have to labor a lot, and work a lot, and pray a lot. How much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Ghost to them that ask him why that's his proposition, not mine.

And I ought to be interested enough, if I've been saved, to be filled with all the fullness of God. I ought to present myself to God as a living sacrifice and say, God, this is what Jesus Christ purchased for me.

Hallelujah. And Father, you told Jesus to tell me that you would fill me with all the fullness of God. Why are we not filled with the Holy Ghost? Oh, because of the idolatry of our hearts. There are a thousand and one idols that still occupy our attention.

Seeking Christ Rather Than Spiritual Gifts

I mean holy idols. I mean spiritual idols. I mean things that we seek. Oh, how long did I seek for humility, and I sought for purity of heart, and I sought for a thousand and one things. I used to pray like that, and it was good.

The best thing I knew. I would spend half hour praying about something that I thought was very important. And then I prayed 15 minutes for something else that was not quite as important. And then I'd spend an hour and a half for something else, and sometimes I'd spend days upon days praying for other things, and then finally Jesus Christ showed me what I ought to pray for is himself.

Open my heart to himself. Delight thyself also in the Lord. Oh, that was something different. That was really letting him take over. Letting him take possession. That's what God means when he says, how much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Ghost to them that ask him.

He cannot own me as a son until that spirit of sonship has taken over. Until I've been made an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ, and that happens, oh, when the Holy Ghost comes in. I will not be interested in anything under the sun anymore, nor anything in heaven but just Jesus Christ himself because he comes not only to glorify Jesus, but to communicate Jesus Christ to me.

Knowing God as Father

And now it says, and when you pray, say, Our Father. What an opening teaching. Not like the scribes and Pharisees. My goodness, when you take all the prayer that's being offered, that was offered yesterday in all the churches, and strip it down to prayer that is really prayer.

God says, if I'm a father, where's my honor? God seeketh such who worship him in spirit and in truth. God seeks children. I'm often told how I protested to God when I was saved and I said, God, why did you make a Waldvogel out of me?

You could have made an angel out of me while you were at it. You wouldn't have had so much trouble with me. And God answered my prayer. He said, I've got plenty angels. I want sons. Oh, it's so different.

I had a friend of mine who loved children so much. Oh, he was just in love with children. And one day he got married and one day he had a child of his own and oh, it changed him so tremendously. He said, you know, it's different when you have one of your own.

It's just different. He couldn't wait to get home at night from work. And even if his kid was sleeping, he had to wake him up. The mother would complain and say, what's the matter with you? I just put him to sleep.

Well, he says, what's the use having a child if you can't play with him? That child was there for him, for his pleasure, for his benefit. It was his own child. It was flesh of his flesh and bones of his bones.

And that father lived for that child entirely. Father's dead now, but that son has gotten to be a very influential and successful businessman because father somehow poured himself into that boy. And Jesus Christ wants to make me know that my prayer is entirely different now.

I'm not an adopted child. I'm not a stranger, but a fellow citizen with the saints and of the household of God and a child even as he was a son. So has he made me a son and I cannot please my father with my studied prayers.

But oh, just that simple. Hi, Dad. You know, that's what it means when we cry Abba, Father. That word has no other meaning, but hi, Dad. That childlike loving. Well, I often tell I've had that experience with our twins.

When they came, Uncle Edwin said, well, Uncle Hans, your days of rest are over. And I thought that was funny, but it wasn't very long before they were. Long as they lived in the faith home, I had to lock myself in my room and act as if I was dead.

And they'd come crawling up the stairs. Each one had a rag doll between his legs and then they'd come and then they'd pound at my door. They couldn't say Uncle. They called me Gaga. Gaga, open up. And they called.

They never gave up. And little Edwin would lay on his belly and crawl and crawl under the crack of the door. Gaga, can't you say come in? I know you're in there. I heard you call. And then little Grace would say, go downstairs and then come up and make a lot of noise and then he thinks it's Sister Frieda and then he'll open up.

And when that didn't work, then he'd say, Grace, go over there and slam the door. Then he'll open the door. Then he'll come. You see, they knew their Gaga. Jesus Christ wants you to know your Father. Your Father.

Worshiping the Father in the Holy Spirit

And that's number one and we ought never, I've said, we ought never to close the meeting until everyone is filled with the Holy Ghost. I'll tell you, that's what God would do if we cared enough for our Father.

How sad the heart of God must be when we don't meet Him like that. And when in every meeting we don't meet our God with that loving attention of a baby, a child to his father. Why? You've seen that picture of the jailbirds playing baseball all in striped trousers and shirts and the kids sitting on the fence and one of the jailbirds makes a home run and one of the kids yells, that's my pop!

He was proud of his pop even though he was a jailbird. Beloved, we ought to be proud of our Papa. We ought not only to be proud but we ought to be bowed before Him. The Holy Ghost alone can do that and God cannot.

Find in us worship in the Holy Ghost such as He seeks. Jesus Christ said God has given Him power over all flesh to give eternal life to as many as Thou has given Him and this is life eternal we enter into fellowship with God the Father and God the Son.

We become one with Him related to Him. Hallelujah! His very breath breathes within us. His very heart is the pulse beat of our earthly lives, our Father which art in Heaven. Oh thank God in Pentecost we have learned something about that.

We know a little bit about it but we ought to say Lord teach us to pray and He will show us how to pray and that we cannot pray but in the Holy Ghost. We cannot worship God in the Holy Ghost until we're filled with the Holy Ghost.

How different is a meeting where everyone worships in the Holy Ghost. We had two wonderful meetings yesterday I thought they were out of this world because everybody worshiped God in the Spirit of God.

They didn't think of it it was God that did it. Oh it sounds like the pipe organ of Heaven with the great organist playing on all these pipes and what a harmony and how it must sound in the ears of Almighty God.

In Romans 1 we read of humanity that because they did not like to retain God in their memory and because when they knew God they worshipped Him not as God neither were thankful but became vain in their imagination and their foolish heart was darkened and they served the creature more than the creator.

Isn't that the picture of the world today? The religious world? Serving the creature more than the creator. If they spend half an hour a week in church while they think the angels ought to turn somersaults for joy over their religiousness and then the rest of the time they work or they go play golf and fool away their time.

Ah but when you have a father does he know when I pray? God do you know when I worship you? Do you really take notice of my prayer? God seeks such who worship Him in spirit and in truth but He creates them.

Oh how I need to present my body a living sacrifice. God doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. They're talking about building another temple in Jerusalem. Well they can build a millions and God won't live in them.

God has a temple upon this earth thank God. Built of living stones of you and me and oh to present this body to God means everything. We have that teaching throughout the New Testament and I'm surprised that there's so little understanding of it.

Surprised every religious movement that came into this world started right at that point where men surrendered to God. The Methodist Church. They prayed all night and they loved it and God came to them.

Oh how God moved in their meetings. One of the elders, Elder Knapp says it's really remarkable with how little food and how little sleep one can get along when the Holy Ghost works. Pentecostal people told us that too.

I remember entering into Pentecostal meetings in 1910. The preachers were always hoarse. They'd never close their meetings before 3 o 'clock in the morning and then they'd get back next morning early to pray and whenever you went there they were praying but oh how God worked.

The Revival Sustained by Hidden Prayer

In Newcastle, Pennsylvania I told that parable, that legend of the conference in hell where Beelzebub called all his salesmen together. They had a conference every 7 years and now they came and they told what they had done on earth.

One told how he had set fire to a church and everybody was burned and roasted to cinders and the devil said don't do us any good. They're all gone to heaven. Another one told how he had caused a ship full of missionaries to be cracked up and all were drowned.

He said don't do us any good. They're all in heaven. And then he saw a bull-legged green-eyed imp in the back. He said, hey you holy fairness, I haven't seen you in 7 years. Where have you been hanging around?

He spat on his hands and he rubbed his hands and he said, well majesty I worked 7 years but I think I done a good job. Now what did you do? Why he said I came across a church, a Pentecostal church that had a continuous revival.

Continuous. People were being saved and baptized with the Holy Ghost and sick were healed all the time and there was such a white heated love prevalent among the members. And he said I looked for a long time to find the secret of that revival and I found it.

There was an old saint shut himself in his cottage and he prayed all the time day and night he just kept praying all the time. I said ah there it is. He said it took me 7 years to break that revival but I succeeded.

How'd you do it? Well he went to that saint and he began to praise him and tell him what a wonderful saint he was. Visited him he said my there isn't another man in the world that prays like you. You're really another Elijah.

You know that? Elijah called fire down from heaven. My goodness won't you teach me how to pray. I'd like to know something about such a successful prayer life like you are leading and in fact I know that you are the secret of that revival.

Just think what would happen in the world if every church had someone praying like that and so on. He belabored him like that for a long time and finally the saint began to listen when he said you know you ought to visit that meeting.

You ought to see what's going on. You ought to see how God's answering your prayers and you ought to let the people know how you pray. Well it took a long long time but little by little this man became famous among the saints.

They invited him to their dinners and like brother Salter says the best way to kill a revival is take the evangelist out and stuff him. And so that's what they did with this prayer warrior. And finally he didn't pray anymore.

And he says there's no revival there anymore. Now they're fighting among themselves. Nobody gets saved. Nobody is baptized with the Holy Ghost. Well I told that story and when I was through Mrs. the preacher's wife got up.

She wanted to testify and she sobbed a long time. She couldn't get a word out. Mrs. went and finally she said folks please pray for me. I am that saint. She said when I got my baptism I spent six hours every day praying.

Every day she said I spent six hours alone with God praying. I know what happened in answer to her prayer. Her husband was pastor of an evangelical church and she prayed that whole church out into Pentecost.

And she said when I spent six hours praying my housework was done better than ever. She said I don't know how I got the strength but I got plenty strength to do my housework. But she said like that saint I lost that fire and today she says I'm doing well if I can put in one hour a day.

She said please pray for me. Well I tell you prayer is such an important job that all hell is pitted against prayer. Never mind your preaching. Many preachers go to hell because they've become successful preachers.

And they're lifted up with pride and the devil gets in. But you'll never get their praying. The devil can't get at you when you're on your knees and when you shut yourself in with God. And the more you draw nigh to God the more he draws nigh to you.

Prayer as Total Dependence on Christ

And that's the purpose in prayer and that's the purpose Jesus Christ has in teaching us to pray and giving us the spirit of prayer because he can't do nothing without you. But he can only do it through your prayer line.

Only when you become an empty vessel sanctified and made for the master's use and prepared unto every good work. And when I talk about prayer I tremble. People sometimes think that I know how to pray.

Beloved I haven't started yet. I feel so helpless. And yet I tell the truth if I say that that's my only job in this life. Not preaching. Not holding conventions. But learning how to pray. Not just praying.

Lots of people pray and they go to sleep at it. Or they pray because they want something from God. I've known people that have spent weeks on end praying because they realize they got a blessing and they got power in their ministry.

Oh what idolatry. That's the worst kind of idolatry that one can but when your prayer is lovership with Jesus Christ because you know that without him you can't do nothing. You can't do nothing anymore than your little toe can lick the communists.

You can't. Without me you can't. Without me you don't have to do anything. Come on abide in me. And when you pray say our father that's more than just saying it with your lips. That's entering into sonship.

Heirship. I'm an heir of God. Hallelujah. Be followers of God as dear children. Oh how the father loves to gather his dear children around him. What a job did Jesus have with his disciples. They all wanted to be apostles.

They all wanted to shake the sword and call fire down from heaven. And Jesus Christ had such a job with them. And I can imagine what a joy it was to him to go to Bethany where Lazarus and Mary and Martha were having a simple simple home.

And where he felt at home. Where he could go and Martha would bring a reclining chair and bring him a footstool and heat some water and get some tea ready and then put a pillow under his head and here Jesus could relax and stretch himself and he was at home.

Well that's prayer when he's at home with you. When at any time day or night he's at home in your heart. Oh far how little we know about prayer until we know that fellowship with the father that deep holy ghost love because they worshipped him not as God but they worshipped and served the creature more than the creator.

Drawing Near to God in Worship and Stillness

Look at all the money that is spent over the creature. This body go over there to the corner and see the women with the tub over their heads getting beautified getting their hair set. I don't blame the women.

When you have hair you gotta do something with it. You gotta make hay while the sun shines and so I don't blame them. I'm glad I don't have long hair. But anyway a kid came by there and he saw a woman with this thing on her head and he said to another kid, hey I wonder what she's getting the chair for.

I haven't heard of any murder around here lately. Well they're getting the chair all right. My what we do for the creature the outward man. What would happen if we paid attention to that inner man Christ dwelling within looking upon him all the time loving him all the time drawing nigh unto him all the time.

That first great lesson is father seeking son who worship him. God gave them up to a reprobate mind and when they thought themselves to be wise they became fool. We see that's happened in all the world but oh beloved we're his children all of us in this room this morning.

We're the beloved of the Lord. Raja Kala Mazaro Bodile Babolo. Do you know anything sweeter than talking to God in other tongues? And that's what tongues are for primarily to speak to God. To say loving words to the father oh hallelujah my how my heart was happy when I heard that gaga.

Finally I had to open the door had to take them both on my knees and my heavenly father he can't resist my abba father. He can't resist it. No he can't and this is the first lesson he teaches us how much more how much more.

I thought this morning when we came and felt his presence if we did nothing at all but just sat here for two hours in the presence of God we wouldn't have wasted one minute. Someone has expressed prayer to be faith and silence in the presence of God and I tell you there's not enough faith and silence in the presence of God because we don't know him we don't believe him.

If you believe that God is present you'll automatically become silent first of all. You won't want to hear your own voice or anybody else's voice you want to hear his voice we've had a number of such times in meeting recently.

Oh I was so happy to find everybody succumb everybody yielding to that sweet touch of the father. Everybody becoming still. That's the way this work was born 40 years ago. People remarked about it. Many people stayed away.

One old man said well if I want to do nothing I can sit behind my stove at home but it isn't doing nothing. It's the thing that the father seeks. He seeks a chance to breathe his own life into his children and I was so happy to read in radiant glory the other day I think I mentioned it last week how that when Mrs. Judd began to go to those meetings she was a very smart woman or she thought she was smart like most women and most men think they are and she thought she knew everything but she liked the preaching she liked the messages and after one meeting someone piped up and said to Mrs. Robinson I like your meetings but I can't understand these periods of silence of stillness and Mrs. Judd said well that's exactly the way I feel now what's the sense of sitting there and looking down your noses something like that and Mrs. Robinson said how do you dare criticize the most wonderful thing that God does among us and it is the most wonderful thing and the reason it doesn't happen more often is because God cannot do it.

He can little babies want to take the pans off the pantry and play with them or like our little Edith on her first birthday or first Christmas when she had a mountain of presents before her I said she has more presents than I got in all my life teddy bears and dolls and trains and wash machines and sewing machines and I don't know what else the aunts and uncles all thought of and she was only a year old and she looked at that mountain and the only thing that interested her was an empty paper bag because it made a noise and that's the way it is with us babies unless there's noise we think nothing's happening.

But oh when father really comes and manifests himself let us ask him to give us some lessons this week about prayer and then let's put them into practice.