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Mysteries of the Wonder
and Power of Prayer In 1972 I received Jesus
Christ and was given eternal life. For the next three years
I spent around $20 a week on books about this new life, and
then in 1976 Bev and I were suddenly in the ministry.
I mention the books because one thing I noticed in all my
reading was that everything anyone received from God came
through prayer, often combined with fasting. Since we needed
everything—I was now unemployed and we had five children—I
started fasting and praying.
We had a small room in which I prayed, and in the
beginning I found it very difficult to pray for any length
of time. Not only would my mind wander everywhere, but after
15-20 minutes of kneeling my entire body would ache
something fierce. I don't know if it was a spiritual battle
or a flesh battle, but it was definitely a battle.
To help myself, I recorded 90 minutes of Jimmy Swaggart's
praise and worship songs on a 90-minute cassette tape, 45
minutes on each side. I would then force my body to stay
kneeling until at least one side of the tape had finished.
It wasn't long before I knew all the songs near the end of
the tape.
During this time, I had one particular prayer that I
repeated over and over, day after day, for many
weeks—"Father, please show me what it means for You to be
God."
Someone once wrote that there is
a prayer that should precede all prayers: "May
the You to Whom I pray be the true You, and may the I who
prays to You be the true me." And I wanted to know with all
my heart what it truly meant for my heavenly Father to be
God—and I wanted Him not to tell me, but to somehow
show me.
One morning I started my cassette tape, knelt down, and
after a time of praise and worship, said, "Father, please
show me what it means for You to be God," and immediately
a holy presence manifested at my right side. I could not see
Him, but I could feel Him more real than anything in this
room where I'm writing this.
At the same time, a pressure at the back of my shoulders
pushed my upper body down between my knees. Now in those
days I always prayed with a New Testament in my hands, and I
put my hands over each other and under my forehead to
protect it from pressing against the hardwood floor, but my
forehead pressed so hard into the bones on the back of my
hand that I thought they would break. So I yanked my hands
out, and my forehead pressed down against the New Testament
and stopped. Why, or what it meant, If anything, I don't
know.
The position I was now in was very uncomfortable, and
twice I tried to push myself into an upright position, but
each time the pressure on my back shoved me back down again.
Then what happened next is difficult to explain so that it
means what it should.
I felt holiness radiating
from the presence at my right side. There were no
sounds, no words, just this terrible holiness radiating from
that presence—and over the years I have become certain that
it was an infinitesimal amount of God's total holiness, an
amount so small that it could not have been measured.
That felt holiness drove me into an agony greater than
anything I had ever known, and I tried to dig myself deeper
into the hardwood floor, away from the awful presence of
that holy being. Then sins began to roll through my mind,
creating even greater agony, and over and over I begged God
to forgive us, saying, "We just don't understand, we just
don't understand."
Now here is the strange thing.
The sins were not mine, and they were not the moral
things that we all consider grievous sins. They were things
that the very vast majority of us never consider to be sins:
irreverence and disrespect toward
God. Acting toward Him, and coming before Him, in
ways that we would never act toward or come before even
human dignitaries. Sins of
irreverence and disrespect that we individually and
collectively commit thousands of times a day.
The holiness continued to radiate from the being at my
right side, the sins continued to roll through my mind, and
I continued to agonize and cry and beg God's forgiveness,
saying over and over "We don't understand, we don't
understand." Then as abruptly as that holy presence came, He
left. The pressure lifted from me, I pushed myself upright,
and my cassette tape clicked off. I was exhausted, and could
hardly do anything the rest of the day.
A few of my conclusions:
- I prayed, "Father, please show me what it means for
you to be God," and He showed me not love, as many would
say, but holiness.
- Sins of irreverence and disrespect are as offensive
to God as moral sins—perhaps even more offensive.
- In every true revival of the past, sinners were
convicted of their sins by a measure of God's holiness
being revealed to them.
- Without the righteousness of Jesus Christ no human
being can enter into the awful presence of God's
holiness—it would be more painful than hell.
- God is indeed "a consuming fire"—of holiness.
Here is another strange thing.
I always had trouble with all the killings and plagues in
the Old Testament, could not understand how God could do
such things. About a month after this revelation of what
it means for my heavenly Father to be God, I was reading the
Old Testament and suddenly realized I no longer had any
problem with what God did. God was God and that ended it
forever. I don't understand how this change came about, but
it did.
Harold J. Chadwick |
E. M. Bounds
No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental
outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can
atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives
prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as
energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without
flame.
$12.79 - 8 Books in 1 on Prayer - Tremendous!
Charles Kingsley
Make a rule—and pray God to help you to keep it—never, if
possible, to lie down at night without being able to say, "I
have made one human being, at least, a little wiser, a
little happier, or a little better this day."
$8.79 - Classic Inspiration on Prayer
Dr. A. T. Pierson
From the day of Pentecost, there has been not one great
spiritual awakening in any land which has not begun in a
union of prayer—though only among two or three. No such
outward, upward, movement has continued after such prayer
meetings declined.
$11.19 - 30 Lessons on Prayer
John Climacus
We know the utility [value] of prayer from the efforts of
the wicked spirits to distract us during the divine office;
and we experience the fruit of prayer in the defeat of our
enemies. |
