How to Pray in the Holy Spirit — Bill McLeod

And then we had cottage prayer meetings going, and we were just utilizing every idea we could insofar as praying was concerned. I remember I used to go into the church on Saturday night, and I'd kneel by every pew, just go right down all the pews in the church, and kneel by every pew and call upon God to bless every person sitting in that pew.

And we prepared by praying. We did practically nothing as far as advertising was concerned. You're going to think if satyrs knew how little advertising we did, they wouldn't even have come. We prayed.

Revival Conviction and Testimonies of Repentance

I cried. He answered. Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things that thou knowest not. And I think God gave us just a little glimpse of what he can do when we pray. I don't think I've ever seen such, at least I certainly hadn't up until then, seen such deep and powerful conviction of sin.

I think of one man. Life was filled with sin. We tried to reach him. We got nowhere at all. Two of us were talking with him. So I said to my partner, I said, let's pray. So we prayed, and while we were praying, God touched this man, and God just tore him to shreds.

He ran to the wall, and he beat on the wall with his fists, and he begged God to have mercy on his soul. He poured out a fountain of sin that had been hidden away in his heart for years and years and years.

It was just like a storm. It went on for ten minutes. I remember before one of those meetings, a man from my church came, a firefighter, and he just stood there trembling. And finally he made me understand.

He said, Pastor, can you pray with me? And he fell on his knees, and all he did was cry for 10, 15, 20 minutes. A man phoned me up one day from my church. He was crying so badly, I thought he'd lost his wife or one of his children had been killed or something.

And finally he made me understand. He had to see me. I said, come right away. Ten minutes later, he rushed into the office. I mean, he burst in and ran over to my desk and fell on his knees and put his head on my desk.

And he cried most piteously with the water finally running across the desk, and I knelt beside him and discovered that the Spirit of God had touched him. He said, God showed me every sin I'd ever committed from the time I was a child until that day.

And we saw something of the hand and power of God. One of those meetings, we'd moved to an Anglican church building, seating 500. We packed 700 or 800 in there two nights in a row, and then we moved to the Alliance Church.

And one night, suddenly a boy about 10 years of age, he walked up, or rather darted up on the platform. And Soterios moved over, and that boy gave a thrilling exhortation to the people. He called on the sinners to give their hearts to Christ.

He called on the Christians to get their lives right with God. Then he just stood there behind the pulpit crying piteously, and his father came up and put his arm around him and led him down to a seat.

We'd never seen things like this before. I remember one time a girl came to one of those meetings, 16 years old. She asked if she could sing her testimony. There were 1 ,400 people in the meeting that night, and she wasn't the least bit afraid.

She sang without accompaniment that old song, Oh, to thee, like thee, Blessed Redeemer. That's the closest I ever expect to get to heaven. I said to my wife afterwards, how did that touch you? She said, I never, ever expect to get as close to heaven again as long as I live.

A lady's trio sang one night. They'd been touched by God. That meeting, we talked to numbers of people afterwards, and people told us they thought they were going to fall right off their seats. The power of God was so manifest in the meeting.

Oh, that the Spirit of God would come and take the work out of our hands and make the community aware of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what revival is. Let's keep praying. I want to talk tonight about praying in the Holy Spirit.

Praying in the Holy Spirit Versus Praying in Tongues

There's a teaching abroad today, and very popular in some quarters, that praying in the Spirit is praying in tongues. I find it very difficult to understand the philosophy behind this. I don't see it in the Bible, for one thing, but when talking with people who believe this, they tell me, well, it's a marvelous way to pray.

You don't even have to think. The Spirit of God does all the praying through you. And I wouldn't want to sound disrespectful, but when people talk this way, I get to thinking in terms, well, then I become a robot.

I could be a pipe. And the Holy Spirit, then you have God praying to God. And I'm just, why am I there? I'm totally passive. I'm not doing anything. I'm not really praying at all. And one lady told me, she said, you know, I pray this way 30 minutes every day.

I said, what are you praying? She said, I don't know. I said, then how do you know you're praying? Oh, she said, I know I must be because I cry all the time. Praying in the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 6 .18.

Then over in Jude, verse 20. Praying in the Holy Ghost. What is it? First of all, there's a problem we have. And it's put very clearly in Romans 8 and verse 3. What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh.

God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And for sin condemned or judged. Sin in the flesh that the righteousness or requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

See, there was nothing wrong with the law as we said in one of the other meetings. There was something wrong with me. The law was weak through the flesh. And in Romans chapter 6, Paul says, I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh.

Then in Romans chapter 8, he says, We know not what we should pray for as we ought. And that's a true starting point of prayer. To understand that I really don't know what to pray for as I ought to. You know, there's a verse in the Bible that says, We are but of yesterday and know nothing.

Well, that's not very much. And if any man thinks that he knows anything, the Bible says, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. We can be so proud of attainments in the secular world or in the spiritual world as far as that's concerned.

Human Weakness and the Spirit's Intercession

Not many of us are like Samson, you know. Samson killed a lion with his bare hands. He was walking by the vineyards of Chemnitz and a young lion roared upon him and he rammed the thing like it was nothing and he threw it over in the bush.

You know what the Bible says? And he told not his father nor his mother who were walking along behind him. They were together, but he was somewhat in front, being young and strong, and they were in behind.

He never even told his father and his mother that he killed the lion. And when they passed by the same way, days or weeks later, he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion and there was honey in the carcass and he took the honey in his hands and he waited out in the path and when his parents came along, he gave them the honey and he still didn't tell them where he got it, lest they should find out that he killed the lion with his bare hands.

Do you know what Spurgeon's comment on that was? He said, oh boy, if that had been a modern Christian, say, if he'd have killed a mouse, he would have published it in the Gospel Gazette. Many of us are so proud.

God can't do anything through us because we take all the glory. Suckling perhaps, but we take all the glory. Get our dirty, grubby little hands on God's glory. God can't use us when we are this way. Alright, we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself, he makes intercession for us.

It says there in Romans 8, the Spirit also helps our infirmity. It's in the singular originally. He helps our infirmity, the infirmity Paul spoke about in chapter 6, the infirmity, the weakness of the flesh, with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Well, the problem is, I don't know how to pray. And some of us haven't learned that yet. I mean, we just rushed into prayer. I heard of a prayer that a man actually prayed in a church one time. There had been an air crash and everybody on this aircraft had been killed and he'd been asked to lead in prayer on behalf of the families that were bereaved.

And I get up there and here's how I prayed. He said, Lord, you know about that air crash over in, Lord, over in, Lord, you know about that air crash over in, well, God, didn't you read the newspaper? And he actually prayed this kind of a prayer.

And I get a little pain sometimes when I'm in a meeting and somebody will be talking at the pulpit about something and before you know it, they're praying. They rush into the presence of God like he wasn't there and they rush out of the presence of God like he wasn't there.

Maybe he isn't. We know not. That's a starting point to recognize and realize that I don't really know what the needs are. I don't really know how to pray, but the Spirit of God does. And he lives in my heart.

Building Up Faith by Praying in the Holy Spirit

And that brings us, of course, to the second thought then. We are to pray in the Holy Spirit. Going over to Jude, verse 20. There's only one chapter in the book of Jude, as you may know. He says, But you, beloved...

And the contrast there is to the world who do not have, he says, the Spirit. They don't have the Holy Spirit. We do. But you, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ until eternal life.

Building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. Do you want to build yourself up? Do you want to be strong as a Christian? Then we must learn how to pray in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Spirit.

Now, someone has said that the Spirit is the breath of prayer in your soul. Andrew Murray has some beautiful teaching on this. He said, Christian, you must understand that the Holy Spirit dwells mysteriously, but actually deep within your being.

And He's the author of prayer. And you have to allow Him to bring the prayer to your heart. Those groanings that He can't utter, He groans and I articulate them. He breathes. Prayer is the breathing of the Holy Spirit in a Christian's life.

Did you ever think of it that way? And sometimes what we do, we grieve the Holy Spirit and He stops breathing. And we wonder why it is. It's so difficult to pray. So oftentimes we totally ignore the ministry of the Holy Spirit, fall on our knees and start to pray.

We don't wait on God. Wilbur Chapman, a famous American evangelist, was holding meetings in London, England years ago. And Praying Hyde, the man of prayer from India, was there in the area, attended one of the meetings.

And so Wilbur Chapman asked him to pray for him. He said, we knelt together. And he said, that day for the first time in my life, I learned how to pray. He said, for five minutes, all that Praying Hyde said was, Oh God, Oh God.

And he said, every time he said it, we were lifted a little closer to heaven. And all of a sudden we were at the throne of grace. And he said, the man poured out his heart in a prayer like I'd never heard in all my life.

I learned what praying in the Spirit was that day. Have we learned to honor the Holy Spirit in our praying? No, we have a prayer list and we rattle off the prayer on the list, the names on the list or the organizations or whatever, and then we call it praying.

It's not praying in the Holy Spirit. Beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, or as in Ephesians 6 .18, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints, praying in the Spirit.

No wonder people are prayed out in five minutes when they do it in their own strength. When we don't look to the Holy Spirit for those groanings that can't be uttered. And there will be times when we learn how to pray in the Spirit.

There'll be times when you can't even articulate the groaning of the Spirit. You've groaned as well. Yet you're thinking that the time you're groaning will be directed towards perhaps some part of the world.

It may be India or it may be Africa or some other place. But the Spirit of God, He's in control of everything. Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work until I have called them. The field is the world and the Holy Spirit is in control.

And He knows what the needs are. And it must grieve Him terribly that He can so seldom find a person who will wait on Him for His guidance and leading in this matter of prayer. But we say words, but it's not praying.

Certainly not praying in the Holy Spirit. Now there's an old saying that prayer that's born in heaven will end in heaven. Start in heaven, it'll end there. If my praying is born of the Spirit, then that prayer is certainly going to get through to God.

That's another great thing to think about. To put it differently, it's worth the price. Whatever the cost is of learning how to pray in the Spirit, it's worth it. I won't be praying a lot of useless prayers that don't really do anything, that don't get anywhere, that discourage me from future praying because I don't see any reality and I don't see God doing anything.

It'll save me from that. So whatever it is and however I get into it, whatever the cost, let's spend it gladly so we can enter into the presence of God in this way. Maybe it'll be just five minutes and all we say is, Oh God, Oh God.

There's a teaching nowadays about conversational prayer and I'm not saying it's all wrong, but I'm saying that the book doesn't take into account certain things in the Word of God. For example, Daniel's prayer in Daniel chapter 9.

Now conversational praying, they say you shouldn't be bringing in the name of God all the time. You shouldn't be saying, Oh Lord do this, Oh Lord do that, Oh Lord, Oh Lord. You shouldn't pray that way.

You should just talk in ordinary conversational patterns and terms and so on because God is listening and He's a person and there's an element of truth there. But there are prayers in the Bible where they brought in the name of the Lord 25 times in a short three minute prayer.

Oh Lord, cried Daniel, hear, oh God, forgive, God do, God work. Well, praying in the Spirit may be very much like that and I'm sure at times it is. Now then, if the Holy Spirit breathing in my soul, groaning in my heart, if that's true praying and I just respond to that and I articulate it, I put it into words, then I must be very, very careful not to grieve the Spirit of the Lord.

Grieving the Holy Spirit Through Sin and Anger

Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God. Ephesians 4 .13. What's the context there? Have you ever noticed it? Well he says, Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.

Do Christians lie? Yes, sometimes they do. Because you know sometimes it's easier to tell a lie than to tell the truth. I mean temporarily it's easy, but later on it may cost you a lot more in the long run.

But the Bible says, Put lying away, lying grieves the Spirit of God. And if I grieve him, what happens? He stops breathing in my soul. Now I find it hard to pray. Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.

The next thing is this, Be you angry and sin not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath. If you're angry longer than overnight, you're angry too long, you're guilty then of grieving the Spirit of God.

Now I know people do strange things sometimes. I remember a fellow in one of our meetings down in Binghamton, New York, and he had a real problem because he had a wealthy uncle, and the wealthy uncle had told him, I have remembered you in my will.

Not only did he tell him that, he told him how much. Now he was not as a Christian, he wasn't sitting around waiting for his dear old uncle to die. What he didn't know was this, that some Christian relative got a hold of the old uncle before he died and got him to change the whole will and remember them and cut this young man totally out.

And when the will was read, he never got one dollar. And oh, he was so filled with anger and bitterness toward his relatives, and it was just destroying him. As a Christian, you can be as angry as you want, it doesn't hurt the other person, but it sure hurts you.

What happened? Well, God spoke to his heart in one of the meetings. He saw the whole thing, and he committed his life totally to God, asked God to forgive him, made things right with his relatives. Remember his testimony one night?

You could just sense the love of God bursting out of the pores of his skin. He said, I just love those people that took that money away from me because I've got more of God now. It was beautiful. The anger was all gone.

You can't have anger and the love of God in your heart at the same time. People may do things that provoke you. As much as life in you, it says, live peaceably with all men. Well, sometimes you can't.

I mean, sometimes you're provoked beyond measure. But don't let the sun go down on your anger. Get the things squared away and taken care of before you go to bed at night. I read about a couple of Hollywood people that had been married 25 years, and they call it the perfect marriage because in Hollywood they crack up after 2, 3, 4, 5 years.

Anybody that lived together in Hollywood for 25 years, that's a miracle. So they call it the perfect marriage. These people were not Christians, but they asked them, what is the secret of the fact you've been able to live together in the same house for 25 years?

You know what they said? When we first got married, we promised each other that no matter how angry we got with each other, we would never raise our voices. It's not like that in some Christian homes.

Some Christian homes, they really get mad. A preacher friend of mine was calling at a house one time, and he came up, it was the summertime, and the windows and doors and stuff were open, and he came up the walk, and he heard this screaming going on in the house.

And this woman, she was a Christian woman, and she was screaming at her boy, and she was trying to hit him with a broom apparently, and she'd missed him, she'd hit a light, and she was so mad she didn't care.

She was breaking dishes and swat, swat, swat, and he was running for his life. And she came out the door with a broom like this, and the boy running, and she saw the pastor. She said, well, Pastor, praise the Lord!

Oh boy. I called at a house one time, and it was summertime, and the door was open, screen door, and I said, just when I'm going to push my finger in the doorbell, and I heard this woman, she was a Christian, and her husband was not.

And that day I learned why he wasn't. She was calling him down, she was skinning him up one side and down the other, and throwing on salt. Oh, she beat him to death. Well, I just had to discreetly wait until the storm subsided somewhat, then I rang the doorbell.

She was embarrassed because she didn't know if I'd heard or not. But, it didn't seem to matter that God had heard. The whole thing. Her poor husband, he eventually became a Christian. Do you know how he became a Christian?

By hearing his youngest son give his testimony one day. That was beautiful. I think he would have become a Christian long before, had she been different. Now, I'm not her judge. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, because otherwise, it grieves the Spirit of God.

Then the breathing in the soul ends. Until we confess it and make it right. He says, don't give any place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more. Rather, let him labor, working with his hands a thing which is good, that he may have to put it in the bank and get twelve percent.

Isn't that what it says? No, it doesn't say that. Here's what it says. That he may have to give to him that needs. Did you ever think in terms like that? That money you can save, you have to give. I remember hearing a Christian one time, and I found out he had a business, a mushroom business, and he was grossing $200 ,000 a year.

And he was giving less than $50 a year to the church. And again, I'm not his judge. It seems he was always unhappy. I was in a church in South America, and the pastor said, and this was unusual, he said, you know that everybody in my church at least gives a tenth, except for two families.

And he said, the two families that don't, he said, they are miserable, and they are cranky, and they're always critical of the program, and they never seem to have enough money to pay their bills. Give and it shall be given unto you.

We have to give. I had a treasurer in one of my churches, and he was a gent. He was Irish. You know, when they get excited, they get excited. He was excited about God and excited about giving. And if he got an extra $50 or $100 bonus, he was just jumping in the air and clicking his heels together because now he had some extra money to give to God.

That was the whole thing. We get it to sock it away in the bank. For what good reason? Do you know what John Wesley said? He said, If when I die, I leave behind me more than $500, history will bear me record that I died a dishonest person.

He said, How can I have so much, when others have so little? George Whitfield could have been a millionaire. So could John Wesley, in terms in their days, financial terms in their days. The assessors came, the income tax assessors, to talk with George Whitfield.

They fancied he had a lot of money, a lot of things put away here and there. And they said, We want you to declare your assets. And he said, I have a silver spoon in Bristol. I have a plate in London.

I have my horse, and saddlebags, and a Bible, and a few books. And he just walked away. It was true. Moody and Sankey could have been wealthy men through royalties and hymn books. They gave every dollar of it away that he may have to give.

If you're hoarding it, you're grieving the Holy Spirit. You'll have difficulties praying in the Spirit. Neither give place to the devil. Well, people think that means witchcraft. Well, it could mean that.

Of course, that would be included. It may mean more than that. There are other ways of giving place to the devil. Jesus Christ said, The prince of this world comes and has nothing in me. Has he got something in you, some area of your life that he is controlling?

If he has, why don't you deal with it tonight by the power and grace of God? Because greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. Then it says, Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

Are you careful with the kind of things that come out of your mouth? I knew a man, as a matter of fact, he was a deacon in a church of which I was pastor at one time, but I didn't know this, he was a high school teacher, and in the classroom, he sometimes told dirty stories because they got a big laugh.

He could really tell stories, whether it was clean or unclean. Do you know what happened? A girl had been attending our church, her mother was a Christian, the girl was not, she was becoming interested, and one day she was in the classroom when that teacher told this dirty story, and she went home and told her mother.

She said, I will never go back to that church again. And she never did. She drifted far away from God. That man never knew for years how the devil had used him. It's by things like this that we grieve the Spirit of God, and he stops the breathing in the soul.

And we wonder why it is that prayer is so dry. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. There are some stories that have a double meaning, and sometimes they say, well, if they've got a low mind, you know, and they take the double meaning, the wrong meaning, well, that's their problem, not mine.

No, it isn't. If you know it has a double meaning, you shouldn't tell it at all. More than that, let's look at the positive side of it. It says, only speak those things that will minister grace, that will edify, that will build up, that will minister grace to the ears.

Then we won't run into this problem at all. Then he goes on to say in the context following the text, he says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger, got any bitterness in your heart towards anybody for any reason at all?

Five days or 50 years, is it there? Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor, you know, seeking for personal attention, hey, you guys, look at me. People have different ways of doing this. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking, and John Wesley defined evil speaking as saying something about a person that you would not say if they were standing right there.

Be put away from you with all malice, malice, that secret hatred in the heart where you shake their hand and wish them well, but you wish they dropped dead. Malice. Put it away and be you kind. Are you a kind person?

Tender hearted. Have you got a tender heart? I said in a meeting one time, if you're really going to serve God, you have to have a heart so tender, well, that if a leaf fell on it, it would leave an imprint.

And there was a preacher's daughter sitting in that meeting. You know how hard hearted she was? After she heard me preach a couple of nights, and she heard about being crucified with Christ, she was so offended that she talked with her sister and her sister's husband, and the three of them decided this is what they were going to do to blow my mind.

They were going to construct wooden crosses and tie them on their backs and come in late in the meeting one night and come marching down to the front and sit right in the front where the whole church could see these crosses sticking up, you know, just to mock me.

Well, the night before they were going to do that, I said that little thing, you know, about if a leaf falls in your heart, it should leave an imprint, and God used that. And she went home and she prayed and she said, God, would you do better than that for me?

Would you transplant yourself into me? And God did. In some way, those people were so changed. It was just beautiful. Kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another. Did you ever stop to think what that means?

That means this, that the Holy Spirit foresaw that Christians would sometimes sin against Christians and it would be neat for this kind of instruction in the Word of God. Kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another.

Even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you, be you therefore followers of God. As dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and has given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for his sweet-smelling fragrance.

Forgiveness, Love, and Overcoming Evil With Good

We're to walk in love because Christ has loved us. We're to forgive because Christ has forgiven us. I was called once to a home two o 'clock in the morning. Two of us went there, pastor and I. Here was a woman sitting there and her husband, he confessed to the sin of adultery, he just got his life straightened out and he felt he should tell her he'd sinned in this area and she couldn't forgive him.

As a matter of fact, when he told her, she ran to the wall and she beat him to the wall with her fist and finally she fell on the floor and she was actually biting the carpet with her teeth. And when we got there she was telling him, get out, get out, get out.

I want to see you again. Don't even talk to me. Don't even look at me. And she would have nothing to do with him. I waited a little bit and I told her a little parable that Jesus told. I translated it into modern dollars and cents so she would understand.

Here was a man that owed $50 ,000 and he had nothing to pay and they were going to throw him in the debtor's jail and back in those days they had debtor's jails and the creditor felt sorry for him because the fellow asked him to forgive him so he said, all right, I'll tell you what I'll do.

You don't owe me a dollar. You don't owe me anything. And he was so happy and he went tearing out of there and then he found a guy that owed him $5. He took him by the throat and said, pay me what you owe and he said, well have mercy with me and I'll pay you all.

He said exactly what this fellow had said to the man to whom he owed $50 ,000 and he says he wouldn't do that but he threw him in the debtor's jail and somebody went and told the original creditor and he heard about it and he came down and he said, I forgive you wicked servant.

I forgive you all that debt because you asked me and you wouldn't forgive your friend this into the prison. You won't come out until you've paid everything. And I said, now the $50 ,000 represents your sins and my sins against God and God wiped the slate absolutely clean and the $5 represents your husband's sin against you and you won't forgive the $5 when God has forgiven you the $50 ,000?

I said, sister listen, what did Jesus Christ call you? He called you wicked servant and she just broke and she looked at her husband and smiled and he came across the room like he was on a rocket and he landed on his knees by her knees and put his head in her lap and she ran her fingers through his hair and it was all over.

Listen, God has forgiven us the whole thing, freely everything. A Christian who doesn't forgive grieves the Holy Spirit, grieves the Spirit of God, walk in love, be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you, no matter what they do, no matter how many times they do it, forgive them, forgive them, keep on forgiving, be not overcome with evil but overcome evil with good.

I said something over at the Bible College about George Whitefield, maybe I should say it here again. You know, he was not very popular with some preachers because he was so successful in his preaching.

Some of them couldn't stand it. They just ground their teeth. I mean, the churches would be empty, they were all out there in the field, 20 ,000 people listening to George Whitefield preach. He preached to crowds estimated sometimes up to 100 ,000 people in the open air.

He had a fantastic preaching voice. While Benjamin Franklin on the Boston Commons, he stood at a measured mile to see if he could hear the guy preach and he heard the first words of the first sentence before the guy was even warmed up.

And some preachers couldn't be heard in a crowd of 150. So he had a lot of enemies. And these 15 preachers got together and they drew up a list of all of George Whitefield's faults, as they thought, and they published it in the newspaper in the New England States.

And of course, thousands of people read this and somebody came running one day with an issue of this paper and showed George Whitefield and he looked at it and he read it. Yeah, he said, that's right, I've got that problem.

Oh, yeah, I've got this one too. Yes, yeah, I've got this one. Yeah, mm-hmm. He went through the whole list. Yeah. He said, they're right. Yeah, I've got all these problems. But there's four they don't know about.

So then he took and he wrote these four on the bottom, you know. And then he had the newspaper delivered to these men. So the next time they published it, they'd have an accurate and complete record of all his faults.

Listen. Praying Hyde was asked to speak at the famous Keswick Conference in England and people didn't know he was a very slow speaker. It took him about 10, 15 minutes to get warmed up and he never did really get going into high gear, to use that term, in relation to public speaking.

They didn't know that. And the crowd got restless. There were, you know, 2 ,000, 3 ,000 more people and they were used to the best, you know, the scintillating stars and all. And after about eight minutes of his speaking, a lady got to her feet and announced the hymn and they sang him down and he never preached at the Keswick Conference again.