a.w. Tozer Audio Prayers - Part 8 — A.W. Tozer

Gathering Before Christ in Prayer

Now I'd like to have you offer, let me offer a word of prayer. Dear Lord Jesus, we're gathered to thee. We're not gathered to men, no matter how good men may be. We're gathered to thee. We minister unto thee.

Christ’s Resurrection and Authority

We trust in thee, O Christ, risen from the dead. Alive at the Father's right hand forevermore, death hath no more dominion over thee. God hath put all power in thy hands and has made thee head over all things.

The Living Word and God’s Power

Exercise thy great power tonight. Take the words which thou didst thyself inspire, for thou art the Word, and thou didst inspire the Word. Make the Word to live tonight, the ancient Word that has outlasted empires and kingdoms and nations and peoples and is still shining in its glory tonight.

We pray that thou would make us worthy to hear thee speak and help me to speak as from thee. The Lord, for these who raise their hands, would ask thy blessing. Lord, they need, give it to them. If they need what they don't want, make them want what they need.

And if they want what they don't need and shouldn't have, change their wants to fit their needs and give them by grace, O mighty God, what they need the most. Now we pray thee, send us out from here tonight to a busy, dangerous, never-breaking headline, more perilous than the one before.

Send us out, we pray thee, into the place we call civilization, into society, with complete trust that these are God's words that can be trusted and that as we believe them, they will be fulfilled for us.

And in us and through us. Amen.

The Perils of Organized Religion and Self-Reliance

O dear Lord, time is short and the hour is late and we have such little time to go and religion has gotten organized now, thy religion, Lord Jesus, so that anybody can do it, anybody. We don't have to have thy gifts anymore, the tragedy and the terror of it all.

But Lord, still, men build their babylons, call them by thy name, but they go down and perish. O we want our work to last, for soon we shall be where the wicked cease from troubling in the toil worn our dress, and only what the Holy Ghost does will last.

We would yield our earthly vessels, we would bring our empty vessels, we would, if need be, come and ask thee to begin to scrub the rust and the filth until our hearts are shining clean repositories for the blessed Spirit.

God bless everybody that listened tonight. Now, make us all see this, make us all understand this, Lord, how tragic it is to peel out at last and be cobblers in the kingdom of God and fool around and put patches on the roof and prop up the temple with sticks.

O God, and it's everywhere men are doing it. We confess, Lord God, that we feel like being sick when we read the pages of the sermon papers and some of them religious magazines. Adam's brain is busy trying to do God's work.

We wonder, Lord, if it isn't offering strange fire on the altar of God. We wonder if it won't bring judgment in that day. O Lord, save us from offering strange fire. Any fire we offer we want to be off the altar, thy fire.

Holiness, Youth, and the Imminence of Judgment

Bless us now as we separate. Please don't let us eat our way through yard of pizza tonight and forget all about this. Great God, we pray thee, give us gravity that boy in his early teens here tonight with exuberance and nervous energy, make him brave and serious.

And we think of thy sixteen-year-old handmaid who yielded herself to the Holy Ghost and was the instrument in some places of the revival. We don't excuse our sixteen-year-old who think they're caught in the puzzle.

We don't excuse the parents who think that their children ought to be permitted to just play when actually, Lord God, the crisis is on, the world's on fire, and the judgment is drawing near and the coming of the Lord draws nigh.

Will thou send us out brave and thoughtful to meditate on thy word? Give us, we pray thee, desire and determination and then push us on till we're pushed over the cliff in desperation. And then as a mother eagle stirs up her nest and then dies down and catches her young, thou wilt catch us and fill us and gift us.

And the work we do, though it may not be vast, will have eternity in its time. Let us stand, please. O Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, Thou knowest we live in a world where lives and dangers are upon every hand and life is short and time is fleeting and judgment is coming, Satan is busy, and all the fiends are squaring themselves across the path for trying to prevent us from going ahead.

Knowing Christ Through Resurrection and Suffering

But we hear thee calling from the mountains each and we want to know thee and the power of thy resurrection and the fellowship of thy suffering and be made conformable unto thy death. We want to know the beauty and wonder that is thee, and we pray to thee to request a prayer.

O Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus, Thou who didst come in olden times in the form of a dove and sat upon till thence fire and Thou who didst come to Peter and to the Moravians and to the saints of New England, Thou who didst come, O Lord, in spots here and there, in Borneo and Korea, O withhold not thy glory from us.

We cry, show us thy glory, Lord, show us thy glory and teach us how to go on. Now, grant we pray that this may be a good week, and if the devil makes it the worst week we've ever had, we'll understand it.

We'll have a naked intent and determination and we'll calmly, quietly believe even though we should be attacked, even though the darkness should cuddle over us, we'll know it's the cloud of unknowing.

It's the dark night of the soul that precedes the bright morning of the heart. And we won't be frightened, for we know Thou didst go through the garden and through the cross and into the darkness and out of the darkness and into the tomb and out of the tomb and into the glory.

Seeking Revival and New Testament Spirituality

So will Thou lead these and lead us and lead this church. And O, we pray bring us to a place where soon we may be under grace, spiritually prepared for a mighty outpouring of the Holy Ghost, an outpouring that shall bring in reality that which everybody's talking about and nobody has.

And we shall come back to New Testament spirituality, back to Book of Acts Christianity again, and maybe out from us here there shall flow streams into the desert way and fire that shall touch churches and groups everywhere.

Bless us as we wait, and above all things show us Thyself, Thyself, Lord, and show us Thy glory. Hide us in the rock as Thou passest by and show us Thy glory, so that all the glory of this world shall appear as ashes after that wonder sighted.

This we ask in the holy name of Jesus. Now as we close, I'm going to ask Brother Ray to sing a little song for us. Search from empty words and fill every word with golden content. Sing the words, thinker, receive where they belong and empower.

May it be said, they could not resist the wisdom they shall be to give us wisdom. Lord our Lord, for much religion, for many religions, for the next hundred years, they'll not be run out. God has something to say to us now, and may the after.

How did you think these? In which we hear a sound that is earthly. It's neither the chief song of the world, nor is it the classical song of another world. We hear it with the priests and elders and living creatures.

And ransom the little poems in their hands. Stand them together again, love them, and wash them in his own blood. We're glad to hear this, Lord. Know what it'll be like, a little bit of it at least. Thank you for a nocturnal Christian.

Humility, Chastity, and Spiritual Influence

Thank you for this church. Thank you for this crowd here this evening night. And Lord, it isn't the largest church on the continent, but to us, dear, the most important, and we pray that all grant us a night where we may go forth to let there be chastity.

Some don't need it. Some are on their way. Some have long past the necessity for any of my priests. Younger ones are coming up. New ones are coming in. Many others are the scores are going to other parts of the country and other parts of the world and taking the instruction and the message with them there.

New ones are hearing, God grant we pray tonight that in utter humility and consciousness that it is not I and not man and not the voice of man but the voice of the Spirit. May we hear thee speak, O Lord Jesus.

Grant mercy to be over us. Such this hot, noisy, junky city.

Cacophonous, brackish in its fears, in its lusts, in its deceptions,.

In its lies, in its possessions. Lord God, have mercy on this great concentration.

Of evil that we've made in Chicago.

We thank thee thou hast sent us a number who haven't bowed beneath a veil nor kicked his image and never will. Thank thee for them, Father. Thank thee some of them are here tonight. Graciously help us that we may be in power and not in burden.

Hearing the Word and Bearing the Spiritual Load

Christ's name. Now the text says, take heed how we hear. And when the great God brings salvation to us, let it ride on a verse. Let it ride on a song. Destroy the church. Destroy human liberty and dignity.

Take away everything good and decent from the world. Please make our beds hard so we can't eat. And help us that we might pray to not be parasites living off the preachers, participators and partakers, sharing with them.

Not only in our giving but in our praying and in our bearing of the load. We ask this in Jesus' precious name. Amen. It has been, I've tried to figure out how many years since I've been here, but I do remember what happened the last time I was here.

VJ day. And they took the rationing off gasoline a long time ago, hasn't it? Now, Father, we well know that spiritual things can't be reduced to formulas even though we struggle so hard to do it. An impulse of faith, a sudden reckless daring of the soul in its leap after God could do more for us than all the carefully laid out sermons could ever do.

But we've done all we can do. We've appealed to the intelligence, made some explanations, tried to say in our racy, modern English what has been said with great and stately dignity in our Bibles. My God, now take this that's been spoken and apply it to our hearts.

Turning from the World to Jesus Christ

May we, one after the other, turn from Adam's unbelieving world with its self-confidence, its self-reliance, its arrogance, its pride, its mad pleasures of taste, its love of wealth, its love of praise, its love of publicity, its inordinate love of clothing and of fine things and of rich things.

Turn us, we pray Thee, from it all, not only in our hearts but in reality. And then turn us to Jesus Christ Thy Son. We need him, Lord. If we gave up the world and didn't have him, we'd be in a vacuum.

Personal Consecration and Repentance

Father, quickly take us through that little vacuum and take us to Jesus Christ, who is the radiant source of everlasting life and peace and joy, world without end. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Cooperate with God in all this, let's pray.

Father, we pray for these friends who ask us to pray. Dear Father, we pray that Thou, through Thy Son, Jesus Christ, will help every one of these that they might drive a stake down and say, as Israel said when she crossed the river, this is a marker I crossed here, something really happened.

Oh, we pray that this decision made tonight may not be the careless decision, but that it may be a determination that's as big as life and as strong and deep as all their faith that they will, they will seek to meet all the requirements that they may in that day rise to that divine abode that the sons of ignorant and light and night may dwell with the eternal light because of Thine eternal love.

Grant this. Then for those who didn't, some who didn't but should have, oh, Father, seep upon us a sense of holiness that we can't sin and excuse it, but that repentance will be as deep as our lives. This we ask in Christ's name.