In Everything by Prayer - A. W. Tozer Sermon

I want to talk about prayer and in the fourth chapter of Philippians the sixth verse be careful for nothing that is have no care about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God so I'm going to chose this phrase in everything by prayer and in doing it I will not be doing violence to the Scriptures because what it actually says is in everything by prayer and supplication the supplication is a form of prayer with Thanksgiving but Thanksgiving is a form of prayer let your request be made known and letting your question that's they made known as a form of prayer so in everything by prayer is what the Holy Spirit said now this is a remarkable phrase and it is a key to the treasure house of God and all that God has is ours but we are not enjoying all that God has either because we don't know it's ours or because we have not practiced in everything by prayer now here we have an unfailing technique for spiritual success and this motto in everything by prayer is one that might well be on the cornerstone of every church building and it ought to be in every pulpit and it ought be in every boardroom in fact for the average board I would suggest four of them one for each wall large enough so that no matter which way a board member was looking he'd sit in everything by prayer now I don't know whether my method is a good one or not but the brothers going to speak on absolutely nothing and I whispered to somebody that I do that myself frequently but I don't know whether the getting up into the philosophy of thing but I like to do it that way so I want to show you why this morning everything we do in God's church has to be done by prayer I want to show you why now it isn't simply that the Lord said it now you believe it but there's a reason why I said it there's a reason for its being true and the reason is that there coexists two kingdoms there is the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God and these coexist and to some measure they mingle but not too much they touch at any rate and the live side by side with each other and if the kingdom of man into which we were born when we were born and the doctor said that the boy the girl we are born in the kingdom of man that's the exiled man who is in rebellion against God that's fallen man we were all born to fallen parents into a fallen society and became members of a fallen race by nature and this this fallen race this this race of man they disagree an awful lot but they're they're in agreement on certain things you remember how Herod and Pilate had been enemies and then when they came to judging Jesus they made themselves friends again they were allow there were a part on certain political things but they were together on this that they weren't going to have anything to do with Jesus and so in the world out there we have the west against the east and we have raised it against race and we have political party against political party and all this kind of divisions but those are local things actually the human race agrees on one thing human race agrees on the basic principle there that we call human self sufficiency we believe that we are sufficient unto ourselves people believe that for your Cajun they will find the poor little chap with no chin in fact and distressed who goes about not thinking much of himself but if you'll press him and pressing you will learn after a while that he has quite a high opinion of himself and his ability if he doesn't have of himself he does have a humanity and he believes in what they call the instinctive wisdom of the race now it's a strange thing that the great philosophers I'm thinking particularly now of Emerson talk about the instinctive wisdom of the race whereas God talks about the folly of the human race the God says that we are fools and when men say were wise men God says that we act like foolish children and no not as much as an ox knows for he knows his home and knows how to come back in a bird knows it makes and knows how to fly home but we don't know our spiritual home and we don't know the hand that feeds us and we're not sufficient unto ourselves and then we believe in the soundness of moral judgments we believe the human race believes that there there may be a little mistake here and there and there may be a juvenile delinquent in the beatnik occasionally show up but that for the most part we know what is right and we believe in the soundness of our moral judgments and then they believe in human righteousness and it's allowing for a few flaws we believe in that human beings are right and good I wrote something one time to the effect that what did I say I don't remember how I worded it but to the effect that people were bad the world was bad and a woman a very intelligent woman obviously from her letter wrote me a very strong letter and wanted to know what was the matter with me that I would make such a statement that the human race was bad didn't I know that there were conquering cancer didn't I know that they were conquering polio didn't I know that men were becoming brothers didn't I know that there were Ospital Devery where that we were taking care of the insane didn't I know that we had children's asylums where children went and were cared for didn't I know that that's insane people were not driven out into the bushes as they used to be that were cared what didn't I know these things well I don't know whether she was asking me merely a rhetorical questions or whether she thought that I just had never been to school but I did know those things but I still believe in the basic badness of the human race I do know those things but I believe in the basic evil of the human race came up from New York Friday night and sitting by to my left was a man who told me that the middle-aged man who said he'd been thirty years a newspaper editor in the city in the in Canada and we we I you know when you're up against a man like that you're careful what you say but pretty soon I forgot that I was talking to a man that knew the world pretty well and we got the discussing politics and communism and religion and I told him and he was very much distressed he's very fine gentleman was very much distressed over over world conditions particularly over the breakdown of the home and I said to him well don't you know don't you know that this is simply a proof of John Calvin's belief that in in the total depravity of the human race and he said that he did now his name was tak telly and he was an Anglican he was an Anglican and I believe he said if I recall that he was the chairman of the Red Cross see the Red Cross or Harker or Cancer Society of Kenneth anyway he believed in that he said I hope you won't think that I am too than too pessimistic and I said no I've just written a book that's worse than that it's just about as bad because I don't believe in humanity I don't believe in the goodness of people unless God helps us unless God gets into us or unless we get into the kingdom of God people are not good by nature they're bad but sure we don't believe it humanity doesn't believe that people don't believe it and there's man's Kingdom filled with with the subjects of Satan and it's organized and it's implemented by science and it has in its favor history and familiarity and visible success and it is all the flesh and it's from the flesh and it's for the flesh and it's dedicated to the flesh into the passing world now that's the kingdom of man into which you and I are born regardless of our race that's the kingdom into which were born a fallen hostile alienated race then there's another Kingdom that is the kingdom of God and that kingdom consists of recreated persons persons who have been born again and new persons who have made Christ their Lord and in whom Christ is honor persons who have no confidence in fallen humanity persons who have no confidence in the soundness of man's moral judgment but believe that let yourself man law with go wrong persons who know that they can do nothing in themselves and have no confidence in the flesh or in their own strength persons who trust in God alone to do an immortal work in them and prove them these are called Christians and they make up the true Church of Christ or whatever denomination but it's a different Kingdom altogether there's the of man and there is the kingdom of God and those two Kingdom coexist and sometimes they spill over into each other as water spills over into the boat has to be bailed out to get together and I suppose there isn't any church anywhere that is totally totally totally committed so the kingdom of God to a point where everything is done by God I suppose there will be a little bit of inflation a little bit of old Adam and a little bit of the kingdom of this world get into all churches I've never heard of one that didn't have a little of it then there are churches that have almost totally given themselves over to the kingdom of man and their philosophies man's philosophy their beliefs as man's our man beliefs and their viewpoint is man's viewpoint and they gold away man goes and they live the way man lives and yet they call themselves churches then there are such churches as this for an effort at least is made that the majority of what we do should be divine and the majority should be on the side of the kingdom of God but were undoubtedly around the edges there are things that are that God's not in and the business of a minister and the business of elders and deacons and church members and Christians everywhere is to keep the church and make the church justice Tory she can be and to keep all the kingdom of man out of us and to keep our soul replete with the kingdom of God that when you step into the Fellowship of the saints you step into a divine fellowship a fellowship dedicated to the proposition that all men are bad until they're made good by the blood of the lamb dedicated to the proposition that were on the wrong road until we find the road home to God to the Cross dedicated to the belief that it's only God in us that can do an immortal work and so we and the kingdom of God have for our motto in everything by prayer because you see we've already admitted we can't do and things we've already admitted there's nothing in human muscle that can do the work of God we've already admitted there's nothing in the human brain that can think the Word of God with our work of God we've already admitted that there's nothing in human nature good enough to build in to the temple of holiness which God is raising in his universe you already have admitted that how then can we do what shall we do under monastery somewhere and hide ourselves away now we're to be in active work but we're to do it by prayers and everything by prayer now let me show you the contrast between the kingdom of man and the kingdom of the world the kingdom of God in the kingdom of man and then you see how locate yourself locate this church locate me locate us we'll locate ourselves in this now the world says and everything by money just have money enough you can do anything everything money talks and money opens doors and this money money always money no more money there better we get on always money right patent a dime but we say money we had more money but the church says and everything by prayer the church says we're wise enough to know that money is needed in the kingdom of God and that God uses it and says let everybody lay up and store on the first day of the week we know that and we know that when we give God takes it and blesses it he has spread abroad he had given to the poor shattered abroad is given to the poor is writen to remain it forever we know that we know that in the kingdom of God God uses money but he uses it only because everything is done by prayer but if you have money without prayer you have a great curse on you I believe the greatest curse could happen to have in your old church would be for somebody to Willis a hundred thousand and the Lord not to raise up praying people commensurate with it if God will raise up men and women commensurate with the gift and I wouldn't hesitate to accept $100,000 and put it to work but you get money without prayer and you have a curse yet prayer without money it's amazing what God can do and where you'll find money amazing where I'll find money so the world said in everything by money and then churches rise up and they're dedicated to the kingdom of this world without knowing it the kingdom of man and so they try to run the church the way man runs the church one man said fire he said I'm a such-and-such that is a he he was certain denomination which I'll try not to divulge but he said the hasn't been anybody interested in my soul in all these years said nobody he said I make my pledge early and ascending my check monthly and nobody has bothered me in years and I never go to church why don't you go to church I never go to church because nobody's interested in me so they're only interested in my pledge in my check and he said I see totes that I get my pledge in my check-in that takes care of my religious responsibilities now he was sarcastic in that he didn't believe it but he knew the church believed this church got his checked and that's what they wanted he could stay home fast he could preach to his empty seat because the check was in I'll take the people you can have the checks I'll take the people God's people God good loving people I love the people but you know I find that if you get the fish you get the coin and you you get the fish to be coin these models and if you get the sheep they laugh hold on his back so it isn't a choice between getting the people and getting the money because if you get sleep you get the money the point is if you go after the money and don't care about the people we're hireling and not Shepherd and the church that only want somebody's money no church at all it's running after the principles of the kingdom of man and then the world says and everything by social prestige I flipped the radio on last night after I'd gone to bed I have a little radio I don't listen to daytime so it's but at nights I sometimes do often do and somebody was being interviewed as shut up caboose was her name I don't know whether you know jargon or not but she would be interviewed and I listened awhile to what Joe Carr had to say and everything by social prestige get up there get up there and get to know somebody and they say it's not what you know but who you know get to know people big shots well I have always felt that social prestige won't do it Christ was born in a manger and Peter was a fisherman and John was a fisherman and Levi was a despised tax collector and that early church came up out of people that didn't amount to very much not many not many are wise not many I learned it not many a rich not many a few but not many early church was born up out of the lower stratum of a strata of society and not out of the higher strata she came up that she came up from the common people and the people who did miracles and went about everywhere doing miracles were common people and some some of our modern critics are modern scholars shake their heads over peters greek they say peters greek wasn't so good said wasn't anything like paul's dreams now old wasn't so good greek but he managed to write some epistles that have blessed a few million people down the centuries and he managed to preach the sermon that converted three thousand and he managed to do a few other things and yet his greek wasn't so good i suppose that if he had been more proficient in the greek he would not have had one ounce of power more than he had than he had because everything was done by prayers was not by social prestige but by prayer and then in everything by publicity I sometimes tremble to think that my son this is now a head of a publicity of public relations Society of Lick relations well and they're talking about getting a bureau of public relations in the Christian Missionary Alliance your public relations I don't even think I know what to mean I don't really know you'd go out and stand on the street corner and preach Christ to the passing crowd you have you have public relations you preach Christ to the people you work with Matt's public relations be decent to your neighbor and that public relations behave yourself and obey the law in that public relations live as a Christian food and that's public relations but I don't think we need a more of public relations I don't think we need somebody was sitting back at the desk deciding how he can make everybody like him and win friends and influence people for the Christian and Missionary Alliance rather than what we need is the power of God and let the public think what they will and if we have the power of God on us and live like Christians - regardless of what the world said I don't care what the world thinks for me I won't stand well with God and if I stand well the goddamn likely to stand well with his best people and after that I'm not much concerned but the world says public relations we ought to have a broader public you're a public relations diet I went to a church one that's like my wife my winter poor were married went there continued their happily married for a while until I began to preach and it was a great church really great church well they used to pray and testify and sing in the power of God was Aaron it comes from you in the service kneel down to take communion and I've seen them break into tears and break into a laughter along the altar and the joy of God with on the place and a little church was packed full and we were having great time then something happened in they had a tremendous church or aisle and the pastor was thrown out and the devil was voted in and then you know what they did next they established a Bureau for public relations and we used to get literature from them of ureters the the such-and-such euro public relations imagine it when they grieved the Holy Ghost so he couldn't bless them then they felt they should do something to keep themselves in good with the public scripture says and everything by prayer not in everything by money everything by prayer not in everything by social prestige in everything by prayer not in everything by publicity and everything by committees is fake now they've I claim that they're never one hour of the day or night from the beginning of spring last of winter next year but there isn't some committee Alliance committee up in the air somewhere floats and rounds you know we just we just try to do everything by committees and then go wrong we get a bunch of to me we get a committee together committee said Vance Hafner is a company of the incompetence chosen by the unwilling to do the unnecessary and we we have we have these expensive committees floating around you know and just one fella the Holy Ghost had come on one man he could make a decision say door thick by bangs dunya Naniwa about his business so that they have to sit around and talk for hours about trifles talk for half an hour about whether to take a 15 or 17 min coffee break in a religious office say they have to have it to relax everybody knows coffee doesn't really like does exactly the officer I drink it but I know it doesn't relax me everything by committees I am for one more committee I would like to see a committee form for the abolition of all committees or at least a little a little while and all you got to have my suppose there are like cleaning house and and scrubbing the dog and doing things you got to do you don't like it but and it's you that it's necessary and I suppose her got to be committed to the end of time they had them in the Bible and all down the years we got them now the point is if we realize that a committee could cut its time now one half of it Fred Morris moody says that saves a man prayed in public the length of time a man prays in public was sure to be an inverse proportion to the length of time he prayed in private to be prayed a long time in private he made his public prayer shorts but if he was short in private he would long in public and I believe that the committee meetings that are on endlessly are simply indicating that they haven't prayed enough and we pray more we can talk less and then everything by business methods we do trying to do the work of the Holy Ghost after the techniques of modern businessmen won't work in everything by prayer everything by education they say now but we need is what we need is a more educated clergy more educated ministry well I believe in education I have said that many signs I believe in education and if you don't get it in school you ought to get it in somewhere or other there are books everywhere you can go down years of Seaton's and $25 you can buy yourself enough good books get yourself an education in some fields and you can get it in years time to read but I have noticed that when a busy denomination starts to backslide they always start to elevate their standards academically the more the less we have of the Holy Ghost the more we have to know about Plato and Aristotle call that being acquainted with contemporary theology I think that we ought to be acquainted with the ancient theology of Moses Isaiah David Daniel Paul Peters John and the rest and let the contemporary fellows kick kick kick the football around because always there's a bunch of self-conscious intellectuals who are busy kicking around a current football having to do with the theology nowadays you know it's New York the doxy and neo-evangelicalism those are big long words don't mean very much really but in everything by prayer say that says the Holy Ghost says Paul and everything by prayer and he made good on it and then the world says and everything by compromise I met a man not long ago Canadian man who says that he is a goodwill ambassador for industry between the United States and Canada I pressed him to know what he did it well he said we I go from the United States to Canada back and forth all the time consider the city representing Canadian industry in the United States he keep his Herman keep keep us in harmony I'd like that job it certainly sits a nice job it's trying to get harmony between the two and he said this odd little thing he said the difficulty is to make the two countries see that's their foreign to each other said they don't act as if there were foreign countries he said there they want to act like and he said you can't do that under law and he said I said the pretty nice way to be though yet it's a nice way to be socially but these is under law they've got their cou countries but they're one socially in foreign friendships well that's a good thing I suppose to make compromises where you can but in the kingdom of God compromising is a pretty deadly business and the church as long as the church goes out to the world and follow the world ways the church says compromise where you can compromise everywhere and get chicken anybody I think that if you I don't think there's a gangster's anywhere from San Francisco to Long Island but what could join some church in the United States I don't know about Canada but I suppose about the scene they could get in somehow or other you know if you smile give them a check and breast well comb your hair nicely if you have any they'll take it in they'll take in nobody has any questions compromises or cuts and everything by compromise try to get along with people let the church get along with the world the church in the days of her power never got along with the world and the world never got along with the church and the day there were weakness she gets along with the church and the church uses are like a cat's paw politician wants to get elected so he makes love to the pastor hoping the pastor in it will be silly enough to tell his congregation that they ought to vote for the big lug I wouldn't vote for him he wrote me a letter just the fact you wrote me letter I wouldn't vote for him trying to use the church the church isn't to be used rather than the church is to serve her generation by the will of God but she'll decide how she's the server generation the world won't decide it for her well the truth is you can't delegate prayer now there's some things you can delegate I can delegate my singing for instance I can have man in the crack and sing my solos for me because I can't sing solo but I can't delegate my prayer nobody else can do my praying for me unless I'm unconscious then you know your wife sends for somebody to come pray for it you can't pray for yourself but normally but sure you pray and we'll do the practical things you pray now I'll sing you pray and I'll give you pray and I'll entertain missionaries you pray and I'll teach or sew or serve you pray and I'll do the practical things that is a that is a deadly snare if you cannot and will not pray God won't accept your sewing if you can and will not pray God won't accept your singing if you cannot and will not pray God won't accept your entertaining people God won't accept your money if you can order will not pray it is prayer that gives power to all these other things singing giving entertaining teaching sewing working serving those are all good things if we set them aflame by prayer but if we try to do them without praying wood hay and stubble in the day of Jesus Christ now the true success of any church is going to be prayer we can easily deceive ourselves but our purity and our power and our spirituality and our holiness will parallel our prayer if you were to have a graph of business men love so well and politicians if you were to take a graph and put it up here and have two lines across crosses zigzag lines one you mark prayer the other one you mark spirituality including purity and power and holiness spirituality prayer you would find those two graphs those two lines on the graph they'd exact a little but they parallel each other almost perfectly because Paula Deen will be dependent upon their I do everything by prayer or whether I think I can do it now I'd like to say this and I hope it will be taken right but whether it is or not I'm going to say it that no one has any scriptural right to teach a Sunday School class who doesn't do it by prayer said he isn't a praying man he ought to be a teaching man because no man can teach anything that he isn't he may try to teach some proof but it won't do him any good and it may not do anybody else any good the teacher ought to be a praying person NOLA nodded a head of department in Sunday school unless he's a praying person no one ought to seek to counsel others unless they're praying person no one ought to serve even in the humblest capacity in any church unless they're praying person no one ever ought to serve on the board and that's the praying person nobody who doesn't practice prayer at least in some degree of regularity ever should accept a job in any churches deacon or elders deacons and elders are picked because they're spiritual people and if they're not praying people are not spiritual people I think it is a travesty and the tragedy that in some of our Alliance churches the women do the praying and the men do the bossing and then sit around the boardroom and decide how the churches to go and the women kneel in the prayer rooms and ask God Almighty to bless it won't work no man ever should sit and discuss the affairs of the church a holy body unless he's a praying man if he hasn't prayed he has no right to make decisions however for us men I'd like to say this in our favor the women have the perb bands but there are a lot of men who pray and we don't know they're praying because they don't belong rubber bands so let's not divide between the two sexes and say the women do all the praying they don't do it all I know some godly men who do some praying tools and I have no doubt that we have praying men and plenty of them in our on our boards in this church but I merely lay down a rule which good not only there but it's good all over the world wherever the Church of Christ is found that if you're going to serve you have to pray or as your service will be wood hay and stubble well everything we do must be done by prayer I'm not a praying man my preaching will not do much good I'm not a praying man my writing won't do much good they said about pear grew the great Saints from who will said about him said the reason pair of grooves writings are so consistently and two flips surely blesses and help so many people is the pear group refuses absolutely refuses to write anything until he is blessed himself says he wants the oil of God on him flowing or he won't touch a pen I think that's beautiful and they said to by Andrew Murray was it or George Mueller one of the two I forgotten which one of them said I will not enter the pulpit scale I will not enter the pulpit dry said if I'm to speak anywhere I wait on God and see to it that the grace of God is flowing in my soul before I dare to address anybody old friends if we want this church to be a rich fruitful God filled Church we're going to have to accept the Holy Ghost philosophy in everything by prayer we're going to have to accept the Holy Ghost techniques in everything by prayer we're going to have to accept it as a rule force from everybody from the newest convert so the oldest Saint in the church in everything by prayer I promise you my friend your friend and our brother Robert gray and I particular Cesare motto and we'll never try to draw our weight around but will in everything pray pray pray the power of God in the grace of God and the Holy Spirit of God may be upon what we're trying to do will you go along with us on that amen

Channel: Christian Sermons and Audio Books

Views: 231,266

Keywords: A. W. Tozer (Deceased Person), Sermon (Literature Subject), Prayer (Quotation Subject), Epistle To The Philippians (Religious Text), God (Deity), Christianity (Religion), Christian (Adherents), Jesus Christ (Deity), Preacher (Profession), Pastor (Profession), Minister (Job Title)

Id: g6783X9PBWI

Length: 35min 56sec (2156 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 03 2013