MEETING GOD EACH DAY IN PRAYER 

By Ernest O'Neill 

I think a lot of you have come quietly into a real relationship with God. A lot of brothers and sisters come to me at the office and they explain that they had no belief in God for years and years and stopped going to their own church completely and then they started to come to the theater and they have begun to take God more seriously. And so I think there are a lot of us here who are beginning to really grasp the idea that there is a loving Father and that he actually does know us and that he does know you and he's interested in you. 

I think a lot of us for instance at school have begun to enter into some freedom from the desire to prove ourselves to our professors and our peers and our parents and we've begun to really believe that Jesus did die to justify us and God regards us as justified whatever anybody else thinks. I think a lot of us have begun to come into that. I think a lot of you too, have started to come into a real experience of control of your temper and indeed even freedom from temper and irritability and freedom from sarcasm. 

And I think a lot of you wonder well yeah I'm in a different position from what I used to be in but you never all those who want to give their lives to Jesus come up front and you never have a Billy Graham kind of appeal or an altar call and God did guide us, loved ones, not to do that.  God showed us that too many people especially on campus can misunderstand that thing or they can go up and make some kind of outward profession but it doesn't betoken a real change in their lives and so we purposely don't do that. What God wanted me to share is what you do to declare to him that you have changed your way of life and here it is loved ones. 

Every morning pray to him.  That's it - every morning pray to him and read a bit of the Bible. Now a lot of you who are Christians may say that's just too simple. Loved ones that's a better declaration that you've changed your way of life than coming up and saying I accept Jesus as my savior. 

Start meeting God every morning yourself. Set apart some time every morning before you get out at all before you even eat breakfast when you can be quiet with God and you can talk with him about the day. Now brothers and sisters that's a far better declaration to your maker that you've changed your way of life than anything else is really moreover I'd go further than that.

If you're not doing that or don't want to, whether you're Christian or not, you're just bluffing. If you're not praying, you're just bluffing that you're a Christian. I think a lot of us are involved in all kinds of big talk about baptism with the Holy Spirit and justification and born of the Spirit and we're not doing the ordinary little thing that anybody would do who wanted to be friendly with another person. They'd talk to them. That's just a sine qua non if you want any kind of relationship with a person you have to at least speak to them.

It's extremely difficult to be a friend of a friend without ever talking to them or talking to her and that's it. If you want to be real with your maker or you want to communicate with him or you want to live with him day by day loved ones you have to set aside some time at the beginning of each day when you pray to him. I think that's why a lot of you know everything you know. 

I think a lot of you could preach the sermons as well as I could at times. You know it all and you've read all the books. But dear ones do you see that God looks down at you each morning and he sees you grabbing the orange juice, grabbing the toast and hitting that road at 60 miles an hour all the while saying, "Lord keep me safe. God the Father is a good sensible wise person and he knows that you do not care that for him because you talk longer than that to even an acquaintance let alone to your best friend. 

Brothers and sisters you can't keep on saying: "Oh lord I believe in you, Father I want to give my life to you, Lord Jesus baptize me." You can't keep on at that kind of stuff if you're not at least spending 15 minutes or half an hour with him each day. In other words he says: "I hear you....ho hum." God isn't mocked you see. He knows when a person really wants to get to know him and when a person is only professing it to others to try to persuade himself. So, a lot of you have real trouble with knowing what God wants you to do in life or who He wants me to marry or what am I going to do about the state of my finances? You're asking everybody else about these things while saying; "I'm trusting the Lord and I'm asking God." But you don't spend half an hour with him each day let alone really ask him what to do about those things. 

Now brothers and sisters, God impressed this upon me strongly last night as I was preparing that I had to share with you what I once shared in an evening service. A lot of you are having a great deal of frustration in your own relationship with God. All of you are at various stages while some of you are skeptics. Some of you are born of the Spirit and some of you are filled and baptized with the Spirit. Some of you are walking in the Spirit, but a lot of you are having a great deal of frustration and trouble and unreality in your life with God because you don't do the one simple thing that the Sunday school teachers taught us to do: pray and read the Bible every day. 

You keep on talking about it but if I ask you what's your devotional life like you think of the best day you've had. You spent 20 minutes and then say that's what you usually do. You're not being honest and you're not being real. If I ask you "do you pray every day" you might look back to the last week when you prayed four days out of the seven and say well sometimes I missed, even though you missed the previous three weeks. So, there's a great deal of dishonesty in all of us about it and I think you're not giving God a chance. 

I'm saying to you if you really are interested in getting in touch with the Maker of the world and you believe a lot of the things that we've shared here in the theater, will you begin to get up a little earlier than you normally would? If you have to hit the road at 7AM and it normally takes a half hour to get ready then get up at 6AM or 6:30AM to relax before Him and wait. You need to be sensible about whatever time is quiet in your dorm. Don't get up to pray when she's banging away at the frying pan and you can't hear anything. Don't get up when there's chaos in the dormitory.

Loved ones there's a beautiful quiet time in all our homes before anybody wakens. That's the time to get up and have a little time to be quiet before your Maker. It's a time to look out at the sky and think Lord that's your sky and you can see me at this moment and you can see into my mind and you can hear what I'm thinking. Give yourself half an hour so that you're not getting into a 15 minute lecture of God.

I think a lot of you are giving 15 minutes at the beginning of each day but it's a 15 minute lecture time. "Lord I'll tell you what I want you to do for my parents, I'll tell you what I want you to do for me, I'll tell you what I want you to do for the missionaries in another part of the world. The Father never gets a chance to speak and you never listen. That's why I say to have half an hour. 

If you ask me how do you get awake I'd say you have to beat that wakeful business. There's no point in rolling out of bed onto your knees so that it's as much like sleeping as possible. No, then you sink into the guru transcendental meditation. That's what it is because your mind is as almost as passive as it was when you were sleeping. Your mind is just floating around there in the unconscious. The Holy Spirit will not blast in on you but the spirits of Satan will. That's why so many of you have trouble with unclean thoughts and wandering thoughts in prayer because you don't get the mind active. You slip onto your knees and you sink into a kind of coma where your mind goes passive and your feelings get the better of you and your body becomes utterly dominant. It's a dream-like experience where in fact spirits of Satan get in and drag you into spiritism. You're not actually praying at all.

Loved ones be sensible. Get up and do some exercises -- any kind of exercises -- open the window, breathe in, do anything to get the old body working and the mind working. Loved ones do it and force yourself to it. The Father beat me over the head on this until I responded to Him and saw the only way I can do it is to do exercises and get my body operating before I go to prayer at all. Do something like that so that you actually go to prayer using your mind as well as your spirit.

I think it's a help to use the Bible. You may remember Malcolm Boyd with a cigarette out of the corner of his mouth and his book titled "Are you running with me Jesus?"  It's interesting but not really prayer. "Oh Lord my mouth feels so sticky this morning, and it feels like cold morning. I'm glad you're with me Lord." No, you can't be wrapped up in self loved ones. Don't get up thinking of how you feel or be all concerned with the way your body feels. Prayer is looking out to God and that's why a psalm might be helpful to you. Maybe you read a verse and repeat that verse to the Father. "Father, thou art my rock and my fortress a very present help in time of trouble. Father I thank you that you are that." Then, look up and out to Him but get out of your own subjective experience. 

Now loved ones if you're really interested in having any relationship with the Maker of the universe you have to do that. Could I speak to the Christians -- all you miserable bluffers -- who think that you have prayer with the Father when you only have it every other day? Do you see why God can't do anything in your life? Do you see that you're not giving him a chance? You're not even being as regular and faithful to him as you're being with your employer at work. 

If you made an appointment with Nixon, or the Queen of England or someone important,  you would be there on the dot. The problem with us is that we're saying to the Father that we'll see him at 6AM and we don't go. If you don't go loved ones either you don't believe that there's a God and therefore don't believe you made a promise to anyone,  or you believe that that God is not worthy of you being there. He is really some kind of servant that ought to wait upon you.

Loved ones do you see that God will treat you as you treat him. If you love me you won't just look through me, and ignore me. You'll treat me in a certain way. You won't treat me as your son or as your brother. You'll treat me in a different way because we have a certain relationship with each other that is different from the relationship that either of us have to anybody else. When you treat me that way and I treat you that way then there's a relationship between us. It's the same with God if you don't treat him as your Creator and you don't meet him each day in prayer. He realizes and knows what you really believe. 

I just knew I should share that with you strongly and firmly this morning. Many of you know all the stories, you've been to Bill Gothard and you've been listing to my preaching. Many of you have made moves towards God and God will take you seriously when you begin to meet him every morning and begin to meet his mind before you meet others minds. 

Just one other thing: I used to find that I could study better late at night and maybe a lot of us are like that. I thought that the Lord Jesus may have been good in the mornings and other men may have been good in the mornings, but I was better at night. Eventually God wouldn't take that anymore. He kept showing me the pieces in the New Testament, like Mark 1:35 where Jesus got up a great while before day and went into the mountain to pray. The Bible talks continually about the morning hours or the morning watch. Eventually God showed me it's the morning before you hit the bitter, miserable critic at your work, before you hit the burnt toast, you come to me and you meet me and allow your mind to be filled with my mind and my thoughts and then you go out to the rest of the world. 

What I'm really saying is if you're serious about God you'll do this honestly. If you're not serious about God then I think you'll have to carry on with a dilettante kind of attitude until eventually God persuades you and delivers you from yourself.

Any Questions loved ones? Brother says will daily prayer show itself in your life? It becomes obvious immediately when you don't get with God in the morning you're starting from behind the eight ball throughout that day. You have nothing positive going from you and all you have is influence from your environment. Prayer changes our attitude and we hit the day on the run instead of stumbling into the day, or stumbling into atmospheres and environments. 

If you husbands and wives have difficulty getting started together in prayer you might use a book like "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers. It has one verse and then a page to read of comment. One of you can read that and nobody's preaching at anybody. So that's one way to do it if some of you have difficulty with reading the Bible and getting something out of it. A book like "Search the Scriptures" is good in that it covers the Bible in three years and gives three questions that lead you deeper into the intellectual understanding of the Bible as well as the application to your own spiritual life. E. Stanley Jones' books are also good in that they take you out of yourself and set your mind on some definite thoughts. If you wonder what to do for devotions and decide to just leaf though the Bible that is bluff. If you love God you'll be concerned to do it in an intelligent way. 

Let us pray. Dear Father I would trust you for my brothers and sisters. Show us that the most real way of declaring to you that we are serious about you is that we take notice of you each day in life and that no day passes without our speaking to you and giving you time to let us know what is your mind for us that day. Father we know you put each one of us here on the earth for a definite purpose and we know that it is from you we are to get our orders and directions each day. So, Father i trust you to help us to see that a great deal of the vagueness in our own lives about our future is caused by our never spending any time with you and never allowing your mind to become clear to us. For those of us who do want to begin to believe in You, we would commit ourselves to take you seriously. We would commit ourselves to giving you that first half hour each day and to plowing on with that as the years pass until our whole lives are lived in the light of your presence and in the glory of your optimistic mind. We commit ourselves to you for this purpose in Jesus' name. Amen