Shabbat Shalom, the last in the current or 12th month and the last, I hope of its kind, as we move at unexpected, lightening speed into the Month of Stripping in two days' time before the Great Melchizedek Dedication gets underway on Aviv 1 to be followed by Passover Week.

Actually I wasn't planning to broadcast today, for a variety of reasons, not least because of all the problems we have been having making and broadcasting videos. What actually happened yesterday morning was this: I was very discouraged by all these technical issues and had reasoned that perhaps this was Yahweh's way of telling me to stop broadcasting altogether and to spend more time with Him, advice, by the way, I had taken to heart from reading the biography of A.W.Tozer. So I thought to myself, I'll try out the software one last time, and asked Yahweh to make the software work if it was His will that I preach to you today, or I would be silent if He did not. I've certainly needed more 'time alone' with Him so I was pretty certain, after dozens of abortive attempts to get the video system working, that it would fail yet again, and was of a mind to give broadcasting a good rest. Well, within 2-3 minutes, it worked fine, so I took that to be answered prayer. During the course of the day I received a clear message but as I started writing it down I experienced opposition - not from the Enemy but from Yahweh! It wasn't until just before midnight that I realised that that particular message was for Rosh Chodesh in a couple of days' time and not for today, hence the spiritual brake. Yahweh's timing is always immaculate and we must be ever sensitive to it.

I will not detain you long today as I know most of you are exhausted from the 'flu bug, work, school, and the usual struggles and vicissitudes that define life for all of us mortals down here, not to mention the storms we have been having that have been ripping roof tiles off and corrugated iron sheets up and scattering them everywhere. It's been tiring gathering them up again and again! I have been looking for a respite to get up on the roof to effect repairs but the storm lingers still.

So today I just want to give you a few words of encouragement. G.K.Chesterton once remarked that "the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting [but rather] it has been found difficult and left untried" [1]. Our Bibles get forgotten and left unread, prayer gets squeezed into a few seconds when we're not too exhausted, and our enthusiasm for making the effort to gather for assemblies can be a bit like aa reluctant child complaining when its told it's time for bed. We soon find that our Christian ideals fall repeatedly short of our desires and hopes to the point that we start neglecting good spiritual habits and suffering the inevitable consequences.

I mentioned at the beginning of my talk today that I had planned to set aside more time to be alone with Yahweh. This reminds me of an Irish plumber from Lisburn in Ulster called Thomas Haire who became a famous evangelist but is best remembered for his prayer marathons. Upon embarking on a ship to return to Northern Ireland from America he was once asked if he was looking forward to going back to Ireland to preach, to which he replied: "No, I intend to cancel all appointments for the next six months and spend that time preparing for the judgment seat of Christ while I can still do something about it!" And he meant what he said. Now Irish ministers can be quite fiery and they usually mean what they say - Ian Paisley was the great firebrand minister when I was younger and because he was in politics too everyone in Britain knew about him. He was a no-nonsense type, had no time for modernism, and was either loved or hated. There wasn't an ounce of 'neutrality', not degree of lukewarmness, about him and people respected him for that. Thomas Haire was like that too. The 'praying plumber of Lisburn', as he was known, was a man of deep, tender devotion, had extraordinary good sense and a wonderful sense of humour. If you wonder where my family's sense of humour comes from I can tell you it's Irish!

What I think was admirable about Thomas Haire was that he was a man free in the Ruach (Spirit). His attitude toward everyone and everything might be called 'good-natured tolerance', especially toward the things he did not like - but one thing was for certain: he would always earnestly pray about the things he did not like in case they were right. His rule for life was to 'lie near to the heart of Elohim (God) and to fear nothing in the world'. He was so totally lost in Yah'shua (Jesus) that Paul's famous words to the Galatians could have been written especially for him:

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of Elohim (God), who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Gal.2:20, KJV).

He made sure he lived that text every day of his life. And I think it was for similar reasons that A.W.Tozer, who was a close personal friend of Thomas Haire, said this:

"The first work of revealed truth is to secure an unconditional surrender of the sinner to the will of God (Elohim). Until this has been accomplished, nothing really lasting has been done at all. The reader may admire the rich imagery of the Bible, its bold figures and impassioned flights of eloquence; he may enjoy its tender musical passages, and revel in its strong homely wisdom; but until he has submitted to its full authority over his life, he has secured no good from it yet" [2].

People have a way of making the Gospel unnecessarily complicated. Some make it all cranial, a matter of theological correctness alone and whilst they may be very doctrinally accurate (though not necessarily) they can also not uncommonly be spiritually dead. I suppose that is why I am attracted to people like Thomas Haire, Leonard Ravenhill and A.W.Tozer because they were first and foremost men of prayer and if you have ever heard any of them preach you would know that the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) was around them and in them doing powerful things through their ministries. But they were also men of the Word - the centrality and authority of Scripture was undisputed in their lives. So it should come as no surprise to discover that two of the pillars that Satan attacks the most vigorously are Scripture study and a prayer life. Without them the believer is missing and arm and a leg, and more. We could talk about deep faith and the pursuit of holiness and purity, meaning, obedience to the mitzvot (commandments), but today I want to focus on prayer in particular.

Yahweh is very willing to talk to us. He not only delights in talking to us but insists that our hearing Him is very necessary. Training to hear Him requires that we first learn to recognise His voice, and we can only do that by becoming habituated by the Word that He has already clearly revealed to us. We learn about the character of our Heavenly Father through regular Bible study and how He deals with men and women of every type and in every age. Our problem is that we not infrequently don't want to hear Him and that because, as Tozer said earlier, we are unwillingly to surrender our will to His. Being "crucified with Christ" or 'dying to self' cannot be escaped if we are serious about being genuine talmidim (disciples). That is the only way we can become a New Creation and not return to living in the Old, unredeemed (fallen) Creation or 'flesh'. Thus we are admonished:

"Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die...?" (Ezek.8:31, NKJV).

One of my favourite Bible translators, William Barclay, who not only produced his own excellent New Testament paraphrase (1968) but was a contributer to the literary masterpiece, The New English Bible (1961, 1970), which are unfortunately little used any more. He said:

"The Spirit of God (Ruach Elohim) can recreate us. When the Spirit of God (Ruach Elohim) enters into a man the disorder of human nature becomes the order of God (Elohim); our dishevelled, disorderly, uncontrolled lives are moulded by the Spirit (Ruach) into the harmony of God (Elohim)" [3].

"When a man becomes a Christian, there ought to be a complete change in his personality. He puts off his old self, and puts on a new self, just as the candidate for baptism puts off his old clothes and puts on a new white robe. We very often evade the truth on which the New Testament insists, the truth that a Christianity which does not change a man is a most imperfect Christianity. Further, this change is a progressive change. This new creation is a continual renewal. It makes a man grow continually in grace and knowledge until he reaches that which he was meant to be - manhood in the image of God (Elohim). Christianity is not really Christianity unless iot recreates a man into what he was meant to be" [4].

That's why I think the coupling of prayuer and Scripture are so important. That's what openes the doors to heaven, enabling clear direction, at whatever stage of spiritual maturity we may find ourselves at. And the process by which this is accomplished is unique in everyone. None of us spiritually journeys in exactly the same way, but journey we must, and all journeys require nourishment and adequate rest. Hans Küng said that this "amounts to the fashioning of a new man: a new creation within the always diverse, individually and socially conditioned context of each one's own life in its particularity and singularity, without any attempt to impose uniformity" [5].

For us, the 'nourishment' of prayer and Bible study, and the 'rest' that derives from the shalom or peace that comes from being in Christ, is what brings about this completion. And all this comes from surrender of personal will, of being 'crucified in Christ', for (to requote Paul using the Phillips translation) "my present life is not the old 'I', but the living Christ within me. The bodily life I now live , I live believing in the Son of Elohim (God) who loved me and sacrificed Himself for me" (Gal.2:20-21a, J.B.Phillips).

That is the full extent of my message today, to urge you (if you have lapsed) into more diligent Scripture study and more earnest prayer withy a view to keenly hearing what Yahweh wants to tell you, both for this special time we are entering, and generally. I look forward to seeing you in a couple of days at Rosh Chodesh for the message I was not allowed to give to you today. I hope this one, which I was directed to broadcast today, has been a blessing and that you are encouraged and are partaking just that little more of the divine shalom (peace). Amen.

Endnotes

[1] G.K.Chesterton, What's Wrong With the World (Bernard Tauchnitz: 1910), p.43
[2] James L. Snyder, The Life of A.W.Tozer in Pursuit of God (Bethany House, Minneapolis, Minnesota: 2009), p.149
[3] William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew , Vol.1 (The Saint Andrew Press: 1987), p.49
[4] William Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians (The Saint Andrew Press: 1971), p.185
[5] Hans Küng, On being a Christian, trans. Edward Quinn (Collins: 1977), p.551