The gold is going to be tried to
our devotional life.
The silver, what is the silver?
I guess you can interpret it different ways.
I like to interpret it this way.
The book of Proverbs says the tongue of
the just is as choice silver.
Yeah, every idle word you've spoken, even since
you were saved, God has a kind of,
you know, he doesn't need a tape recorder,
but he has an eternal record of it.
You know the gossip, the slander, the criticism,
the prejudice.
You know, when somebody upset you and instead
of being quiet, you spilled out just what
was on your heart at that moment.
Can you think of all those awesome words?
Can you think of all the words we've
preached to thousands of people over the years?
And we're going to answer and the fire
is going to be put to them?
Well, will they be hay and stubble or
will they abide the fire?
The fire shall try every believer's work.
Silver, gold, precious stone.
What are the precious stones?
Well, when I read that, I think of
the breastplate that was on the priest, the
priest in the Old Testament.
It was divided into twelve.
Each stone was a different stone.
Each stone had the name of a tribe
on it.
And he went into the holy place to
pray with a breastplate on him.
Oh, well, how do you handle this?
How do you handle this?
You know why the world is poor and
sick outside?
Because we really don't know how to pray,
that's why.
Because we're satisfied we've left our lousy living
and we don't drink and lust and damn
ourselves every day.
And now we're Christians and we're so content
and so happy and so satisfied.
I've said it many times.
I said again this morning that no man
is greater than his prayer life.
I don't care about his organization and his,
these boys all have a, what is it,
a mailing list.
Doesn't worry me.
Let me live with a man a while
and share his prayer life and I'll tell
you how tall I think he is or
how majestic I think he is in God.
Supposing I could say to Gabriel this morning,
Gabriel, hand this book down.
Well, let's preview eternity.
Here we are, millions of people, all the
prayer bodies.
America has produced some of the greatest.
Praying Payson of Portland had a floor harder
than that, and at the side of his
bed when he knelt he used to pray
and pray and pray.
And when they washed his body for burial
he had great big hooves on his knees
like camels, like history says that James in
the Bible had camel's knees, at least tradition
says that.
Well, it's a living fact that Payson had
them.
And when they were washing him somebody said,
what, abnormal knees, they're calloused, they're heavy with
calluses.
Yeah, because he used to pray at the
side of his bed with energy.
And in that hard floor he wore two
grooves like that, about six or seven inches
long where he used to pray and make
intercession.
Praying Payson of Portland.
Many of you can buy the book if
you haven't read it.
I think it's in the book still there,
Praying Hyde, John Hyde.
I met somebody who used to hear him
pray and told me what an amazing thing
it was to hear him pray in India.
You know, we think we've got a message,
you've got to drop it here and run
there and catch a plane here and go
there and...
No, no, that's not the greatest ministry.
It's good, God has ordained it, but the
greatest ministry I'm sure is the ministry of
intercession.
Let's ask Gabriel to hand the book down.
Let's look at all the apostles and all
the saints of all the ages.
There's Phinney, look, there's Phinney with his amazing
revival.
There's William Boole, the founder of the Salvation
Army.
There's John Wesley.
Here are all the great heroic figures we've
all read about them, and here they are
all watching while the book is handed down.
And somebody's going to read the record.
Would you volunteer and say, well, I'd be
happy if you read my record to this
multitude?
Supposing I say, Gabriel, hand me the record
for 1724.
And I open the book there, I read
1724.
I go down the B's, David Braynard, just
a young American, died at the age of
28.
All he possessed was a cowhide that he
had tanned and he wrapped himself in it
and put a rope around him and he
rode over the Susquehanna River there and he
followed the Indians and he had tuberculosis and
he says, I got up this morning and
the Indians were still committing adultery there and
still drinking there and still beating their tom
-toms and still shouting like hell itself.
He came out of the teepee he was
sharing and he said there was nowhere to
pray.
So I went out in the forest and
he said, Ann Nelson, the snow was up
to my chin and it was a half
hour after sunrise.
He weighed about 95 pounds.
No, he didn't have a heater with him
or anything else.
He was just there in the frigid snow
half an hour after sunrise and he said,
I did so wrestle in prayer, he says
in his archaic English, I wrestled in prayer
for about 12 hours.
The sun was setting and then I could
only touch the snow with the tips of
my fingers.
The snow was up to his chin when
he started praying and he makes intercession in
a little body that weighed 90 pounds until
the sweat of his body melted the snow.
Well, God pity us, we can't get folk
to our churches and we've got velvet cushions
on the seats and we've got nice stuff
on the floor so our darling little knees
won't get hurt and boy, we can't get,
we can't muster a corporal's guard to pray
in the average church.
Praying patron of Portland, John Hyde, the great
intercessor, David Brainerd, when God opens that book
of intercession, when he puts the fire to
their prayer life, their devotional life, I'll tell
you what, there'll be nothing lost.
It won't be wood, it won't be hay,
it won't be stubble.
I discovered this poem just yesterday.
It's called His Plan for Me.
I didn't have time to memorize it.
When I stand at the judgment seat of
Christ and he shows his plan for me,
the plan of my life as it might
have been, had he had his way, and
I see how I blocked him here and
I checked him there and I would not
yield my will, will there be grief in
my Savior's eyes, grief, though he loves me
still?
Would he have me rich and I stand
there poor, stripped of all but his grace,
while memory runs like a hunted thing down
the paths I cannot retrace?
Lord of the years that are left to
me, I give them to thy hand.
Take me and break me and mold me
to the pattern that thou hast planned.
It's going to be an awesome day.
When I was at school, I said about
two-thirds back there was a kind of
a level here, then there were some seats
up here, and I sat in the first
little gallery as it were.
And you know, I didn't mind school too
much, but I was very envious in those
days of the school captain.
He lived, he worked just across the aisle
from me.
He was the best soccer player, and I
wanted to be that.
He was the best at cricket, and I
liked cricket.
He was the best runner we had, and
I liked running.
And he was a very good artist, but
he was quite a brain.
And you know, if I could ever save
up my stomach aches, I saved them till
the day before the final examination.
But my mother was smart, she knew I
was saving them up, I don't know how.
And I'd get up that morning and say,
Mother, I don't feel good at all.
I think I should stay at home.
She'd say, Okay, you can stay at home
tomorrow, but not today.
But today was the day of judgment.
And you know, the things would be put
down on the board there, and as soon
as they were down, Renton would get it.
His name was Renton, and he'd get his
paper, and he'd dash through it.
Man, he was through the first two or
three subjects before I'd even got the things
read.
Oh, he and another guy that were there,
they used to say it bought its exams.
And they knew they'd be number one and
number two, and every year I was at
school, they were number one and number two
on the chart when it came out.
These boys were always at the top, they
had no fear of the judgment.
They were prepared for it.