Welcome to From the Pulpit and Classic Sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith, and powerful sermons from modern preachers
too.
This week we have Hans Wadvogel with his
message, Be Diligent to Get Alone with God.
Sometimes people seek the Lord, and they make
all the plans, and they have all the
ideas.
When I was a beginner in the ministry
before I came to Brooklyn, I used to
try to get a week now or two
weeks then to wait upon the Lord.
And one time I found out that a
brother-in-law of mine and his family
were going away on a vacation, and so
I asked him whether I couldn't be in
his house for those two weeks.
So he allowed me to if I would
take care of his chickens.
Well, they were all dead by the time
he came back, and two weeks later.
And his little girl said to me, you
died them, didn't you?
Well, no, they died by themselves.
I didn't have to do anything about it.
But at any rate, when I had made
that plan, some ministers got after me and
they thought it was a waste of time.
They tried to persuade me that that was
a waste of time, that I ought to
be out preaching.
So I went to the Lord.
In those days we had the privilege of
going to some of the so-called vessels
and ask them to pray.
And I said, well, it seems to me
that it makes a lot of difference.
And the Lord said, why certainly two weeks
out of your life.
Two weeks.
I found out that those two weeks were
controlling weeks.
They changed my whole life.
The course of my whole life was changed.
You know that the eyes of the Lord
run to and fro throughout the whole earth
looking for somebody whose heart is perfect toward
him.
What is God looking for?
Can't he find hearts?
Very, very few.
Whose hearts are perfect toward him.
Oh, what an expression.
Is my heart perfect toward my God?
I don't see him.
That's true.
But I meet with him when I pray.
When I come here, I meet with my
God and he meets with me.
Oh, how I ought to be awake.
How my soul ought to be alert.
How I ought to prepare myself very carefully.
That's what made the saints of old fast.
They wanted nothing to hinder them from approaching
to God.
They knew that an overfed stomach would hinder
their spirit of prayer.
And so they prepared themselves to meet God.
Oh, my father, my heart perfect toward God.
What will God do for me when he
finds my heart perfect toward him?
Well, I tell you something.
There's a very, very, very great difference in
hearts.
We may think we're tough, and God thinks
differently.
God looks into the heart.
But one thing is very, very hopeful.
Philippians 2, 13, where he says, It is
God who worketh in you.
Oh, that's what prayer means.
It isn't me working, but it's God working.
God according to his riches in glory by
Christ Jesus.
Just think, God, though being in the form
of God, humbled himself, became sin for me,
rose from the dead, received gifts from the
Father.
Now he wants the authority in my life.
Now he wants to be the one to
work out in me his own salvation.
How very wonderful.
If I had to do it, I couldn't
do it.
I wouldn't get any place.
But God does it.
Thank God.
And that's the objective we ought to have
at the beginning of this week.
God is here.
God is here now.
God looks upon my heart now.
God sees through me now.
Lord, thou hast searched me and known me.
He knows my need before I tell him
about it.
Not only that, but he has provided so
much more bountifully than I could even tell
him.
Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Oh, the wonderful salvation God holds in store
for me.
Why is it that we don't advance faster?
Well, it's our attitude toward God.
How often is our attitude in prayer one
of laziness?
The devil will see to that if I
don't awaken unto God.
That's why he says, watch unto prayer.
Oh, blessed is the man that knows and
is conscious of the fact that his heart
must be perfect toward God.
In the Old Testament, we read again and
again of men who prepared their hearts unto
the Lord their God to seek by prayer
and fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
How did it happen?
Well, they had an objective.
They had a promise from God.
And they were not going to miss that
promise of God.
No matter what anybody else did, they were
going to be perfect toward God.
They were going to give God a chance
to work out his great plan in their
hearts.
And if my objective is that, oh, God
has given me his word and his wonderful
promise.
Where are the hearts?
I found a man after my own heart
who shall do all my will.
Oh, no wonder Billy Sunday says, God stopped
making worlds when he found a man like
that.
They were so few and so far between
that if God can find one in a
generation, he's doing pretty well.
But shouldn't he find our hearts like that
when we know all this?
Dr. Gray was here.
We discussed this thing and he said, you
know, Pentecost has lost its objective.
It doesn't have an objective anymore.
One time we had an objective when we
sought the baptism according to Acts 2.4.
We knew that God would fill us with
the Holy Ghost according to Acts 2.4.
And so we sought him earnestly until he
baptized us according to Acts 2.4. I've
seen people, as soon as they stammered a
few words in tongues, get up from prayer
and then never again show themselves as the
author.
They had obtained their objective.
That's what they were after, speaking in tongues.
They had it.
Oh, there's a multitude of Pentecostal people like
that.
Why they've got it now.
And there's a multitude of preachers that teach
that too.
Saw a little girl in Switzerland get the
baptism, a very wonderful baptism.
And in the following meeting, the power of
God came upon her and made her a
real blessing.
She had real intercession in the meeting.
But the minister didn't like it.
He went and shut her up.
He says, now you must be still.
You got it now.
Very strange.
You've purchased an automobile.
Now put it in the garage.
You got it now.
Don't use it.
That's the wisdom of the flesh.
But beloved, we have an objective, or don't
we?
To know him.
Oh, that I might win Christ.
That I might be found in him.
Oh, that Christ might dwell in my heart
by faith.
The reason we stop seeking is because we
don't understand the process.
You seek a while and God empties you.
You wanted to get filled with good feelings
and you don't get them.
The fight starts.
Prayer is a fight.
And unless your heart is perfect toward God
and you view the objective and you see
the promise of Pharaoh and you're persuaded of
it and you're going to set your faith
unto the Lord your God, to have that
promise, you're most likely going to quit.
That's why he tells us to work out
our salvation with fear and trembling.
Oh, for a prayer meeting like that, where
every heart fears to miss.
Fears to miss God's best.
How many have missed it and God never
saw fit to return to them.
But what am I expecting from my God
today?
Why I feel the current moving on the
line.
And you know, the first thing God has
to do for me is to change my
heart and my attitude.
Oh, these hearts of ours are so calloused
sometimes, so dark, so filled with cobwebs, thistles
and thorns in our hearts.
Why people confess this.
They have an awful time keeping their minds
on Jesus right now.
You watch, as soon as that door squeaks,
a dozen heads will turn like on a
hinge.
You watch now.
It'll happen as sure as the sun rises
tomorrow morning.
That's our hearts.
Our hearts are deceitful above all things, but
they wouldn't be if God got a chance.
They certainly wouldn't.
God would transform them.
God would change them.
He would strengthen us with might by His
Spirit in the inner man.
Oh, we pay so much attention to the
outer man that we have no time for
God to pay attention to the inner man.
But what will two weeks of prayer like
this mean in your life?
It depends what God can do for you.
That's what it is.
And what can, well, God tells me what
He will do.
If I look into the Bible, He will
transform me on the inside by the power
of the Spirit.
He will strengthen me with might by His
Spirit in the inner man.
He'll get hold of your thoughts.
Thou knowest my thoughts afar off.
Oh, how many people have never consecrated their
thought life to God.
They want God to be king, but not
there, not in the heart.
Guard thy heart with all diligence, for out
of it are the issues of life.
Unless I turn my heart and my mind
over to God, it won't happen, but it
will happen when I do.
God will renew my mind, thank God.
All the wonders that He has promised in
the New Testament are unspeakable.
They're out of this world.
He says, I hath not seen and ear
hath not heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man.
The wisdom of man and the learning of
man won't do it.
They're eliminated.
There has to be a different source of
wisdom and knowledge, and in Him are hid
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Why is not my heart perfect towards so
wonderful a God, so wonderful a lover, so
wonderful a God who loves me all the
time, who works for me all the time,
who proposes to give Himself and His own
wisdom and His own knowledge.
I tell you something, a talk like this
may seem very simple, but do you know
that it brings more wisdom to you than
you can get in a university of learning
in a whole year's time?
It will if you get it, if you
take it.
Oh, that's what's the matter, we don't believe
our God, but when my heart is perfect
toward Him, it will not waver.
God has spoken to us by His Son,
and what did He speak?
Why His New Testament, He that was rich
became poor for our sakes.
That we through His poverty might be rich,
and how rich?
Why rooted and grounded in love.
You want to be like that?
Would you like to be rooted and grounded
in love?
Well, then you can't be a snob anymore.
You can't judge people anymore like you have
been doing.
You can't show the cold shoulder to anybody.
You cannot exercise your own opinions anymore.
Oh, these views, these opinions, how quickly we
judge somebody else, and we're satisfied to do
that, and to keep a heart that is
divided toward God, but to let Jesus Christ
reign is a very different matter.
I ought to see to it with fear
and trembling that Jesus takes His great power
and reigns, and two weeks alone with God
ought to make such a change in my
life, and it will if there are two
weeks with God, if God can have His
way with me.
If God, oh, the light that will come
to my soul.
I was interested in a word the Lord
spoke some time ago.
He said, oh, if Jesus could only find
people that are willing to be alone with
Him all the time, there would be wonderful
sight.
Wonderful sight.
Do you know that's what we need?
Sight by the Holy Ghost.
It doesn't come intellectually, else the princes of
this world would have known it, but they
didn't know Him.
They didn't understand the prophets.
They wrote books about prophecy and fulfillment of
prophecy, and they do that today, but the
Bible says they knew Him not.
Oh, it takes the spirit of wisdom and
revelation, and that spirit is here this morning
waiting to give you wisdom.
He says through Solomon, turn in hither, ye
simple ones.
That means you dumb ones.
Come to me if you're dumb.
If you're not smart enough, I'll make you
smart.
I will pour out my spirit unto you.
Oh, wonder of wonders, Jesus Christ is made
unto me wisdom from God, and no matter
how stupid I am, if I but give
God a chance, I sit an infant at
His feet where moments teach me more than
all the sages, all the books of all
the ages whore.
There lie my books for all I sought.
My heart possesses now the words are sweet
that tell thy love, but love itself art
thou, and oh, the love itself comes to
me.
Father comes to me.
Father, that's what prayer means.
When ye pray, don't pray like the scribes
and Pharisees who think they shall be heard
for their much speaking.
Enter into your closet, that means your own
heart, and shut the door.
Alone with God, the world forbidden.
Alone with God.
Have you ever been alone with God?
Oh, tell me.
Oh, yes, we get alone with God, and
then the telephone rings, and then some duty
presses upon us, and then some friend calls,
and then the flesh gets into power, and
oh, God has to say, their God is
their belly.
I am not their God.
Oh, beloved, we have an objective.
God has given it to us.
The question only is, have I accepted God's
objective?
It's Jesus.
Jesus is that objective.
One thing I do for getting the things
that are behind, and reaching for the things
that are before, I press toward the mark.
Oh, how God desires us to get hold
of this thing, because there will not be
a rapture until God finds a people that
want Jesus like that.
There will not be a resurrection from the
dead until we follow the Apostle Paul.
That's in the Bible.
Why do they develop such strange doctrines about
his work that I might attain unto the
resurrection of the dead?
When a woman in Switzerland, Jumper Droodle, who
had a gift of faith or a gift
of healing, died, some dupes went there and
dug her up again.
They wanted to prove that she had been
resurrected.
She wasn't.
The hunchback lady was still there in the
grave.
I mean, her corpse.
Oh, beloved, when Paul says, if by any
means I might attain unto the resurrection from
the dead, he sets the objective before you
and before me.
He has no other objective than we have.
It's the objective before the Church.
I show you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall
all be changed.
That's why he calls upon us to fight
this fight.
It's a fight.
And no man that warreth entangleth himself.
And if a man also fight for masteries,
he's not crowned.
Oh, that's the crown of life of which
the Apostle Paul speaks.
It's laid up for him and for all
them also that love his appearing.
Oh, when you think of his appearing, think
of his appearing.
It ought to fill our hearts with a
wholesome fear, shouldn't it?
People talk glibly about the coming of the
Lord and are not getting ready at all,
are not doing anything at all.
Beloved, I can't do anything about it, but
give myself to God so that he can
work in me to will and to do.
And he proposes to do that.
It's very different.
When God works to will, that's conviction.
That's conviction that sticks.
When God works in you to will, it's
because he has chosen you to be a
son of God without rebuke.
And he's not going to let you get
by with a superficial experience or a vain
profession.
He won't.
He will not.
He will not allow you to waste your
time either.
Through desire, a man having separated himself, intermediates
with all wisdom.
When I talk like this, there always looms
up before me a picture of a young
man, Joseph one and mother, who came into
the faith home in Zion at a time
when God kept this objective before the people
all the time.
And I remember the time he came, he
got saved.
And I remember how people were proud of
being at the faith home and hearing from
heaven.
They told me what wonderful people they were.
One minister told me what a wonderful man
he was, what a wonderful call he had.
Why he had a wonderful call.
The Lord had spoken to him about it
and spoken to him by the hour about
it.
And then he spoke to you writingly about
Joseph.
But the difference was this, that Joseph didn't
think of any being a great man, but
he took the message and he went to
seeking the Lord.
And though he was very weak, I remember
times when he'd fast for two weeks.
He'd pray.
He was so weak he had to stay
in bed to pray.
But he prayed.
Oh, how he prayed.
It was my privilege to pray with him.
He had an objective.
He wanted to find God.
He found God.
And though he had no eloquence, he couldn't
preach like these other great men.
Yet he went way beyond them.
The others are today broken vessels.
They're no place.
Talking about it won't do it.
Priding yourself of having a call won't do
it.
But acting upon it will.
And Joseph acted upon it.
He prayed.
He set his faith unto the Lord, his
God.
He sought God.
God came to him.
God changed him.
Today his name shines not only in this
country, but in Europe as well.
He's unique.
He's one in ten thousand.
How did he become that way?
Well, he didn't seek to be great, but
he sought to do the will of God.
For instance, he sought to live a life
of love.
Oh, beloved, what are we doing?
God's calling you.
God's calling me today, this morning, now, this
very moment.
Is my heart awake?
If it isn't, I ought to wake it
up.
Do you know how?
And I envy those who are young, very
young in this place.
You know, when you get older, you get
kind of flabby.
But when you're young, you have pen.
You've got energy.
That energy ought to be given to God.
Oh, how blessed it is to hear the
voice of God.
Give me, my son, thy heart.
Seek now the Lord, thy creator, in the
days of thy youth.
That's the time to seek the Lord.
But most young people think that's the time
to have a good time.
They can always seek the Lord.
One day passes, another day passes, a week,
a month, a year passes.
Well, we're still young.
That's not having a heart perfect toward God.
Oh, God calls upon us.
And I trust that in this assembly, God
will find hearts that are perfect toward him.
You've been listening to the From the Pulpit
in Classic Sermons series.
This week, you heard Hans Wadvogel with his
message, Be Diligent to Get Alone with God.
Tune in next week to hear Amy Simbel
McPherson speak about the power of faith on
From the Pulpit in Classic Sermons.