The transformative power of seeking God in a private, "shut door" space, drawing parallels from the lives of Elijah and Elisha. It highlights how the widow in 2 Kings 4, by shutting her door, experienced supernatural provision of oil, and how Elisha, behind a closed door, revived the Shunammite woman's son. The core lesson is that true spiritual victory and encountering God's deepest truths require intentional withdrawal from worldly distractions to commune with Him. The message concludes by urging believers to cultivate this practice of stillness and private communion to experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit and become effective channels of God's power.
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Eatly, I ask that the benediction will remain quiet while the organ plays softly. Let us pray that God may help us to hear not only that we be also doers of the word. All those who would like to see Mr. Wiley's after-the-service may meet him here in front of the auditorium. Thanks. Now we'll turn right away to our portion of scripture in the second book of Kings, chapter four. I don't know if you think we are moving slowly or fast, but chapter after chapter is being forged in this picture book that I think reveals the secrets of victory.
And we are going to take our title tonight. Let's see now. Would you like me to check over the chapter? Chapter one, man of God. Chapter two, take the mantle. Chapter three, dig the ditches. Chapter four, pour the oil in the opening verse. And this morning, Chapter five, watch your day. Under the little key, it fell on a day.
Watch your day. Now tonight we are going to take a little praise, and you can count how many times it comes in the scripture reading. It's the little praise. Shut the door. Shut the door. Two Kings, chapter four. verse four when thou art come in this is the prophet speaking to this poor widow woman woman in great distress when thou art come in thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons and shall pour out into all the vessels And thou shalt set aside that which is full.
So she went from him and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her. And she poured out. And it came to pass when the vessels were full that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. and the oil stayed. Then she came and told the man of God, and he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy death, and live thou and thy children of the rest. Now move down the chapter to verse eighteen.
When the child was grown, it fell on a day. She went out to his father to the reaper, He said unto his father, My head, my head. He said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. When he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon and then died. She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God and shut the door upon him and went out. called unto her husband and said, Send me, I pray, thee one of the young men and one of the asses, and I may run to the man of God and come again.
Verse thirty-two. When Elisha was coming to the house, behold, the child was dead and laid upon his bed. He went in, therefore, and and shut the door upon them twain, prayed unto the Lord. He went up and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, and he stretched himself upon the child. And the flesh of the child waxed war.
Shall we bow in prayer for the moment, quiet? Lord, bless the reading of thy word to our hearts, and thou, as we talk now over the open page, have us largely to forgive her and be conscious that thou art leading us by thy spirit into thy truth, and wilt thou teach us something that may leave its mark upon our spiritual experience. might be, Lord, that from tonight we shall learn the secrets of the shut door for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen. Now, you counted rightly. I know you all counted rightly. It was four times you get the little phrase in the reading just now. Shut the door. Shut the door. I suppose you've often looked around your home and you thought to yourself, well, why do people put windows in the home? Well, it's to let the air and light in. Of course, in your day with air conditioning and electricity, you could live in a house without any windows. But I don't think it would be very nice. Windows are lovely. You can look around your home and you say, well, what are these cupboards for?
Well, they're to put all your goody goodies away in safe places behind the cupboard doors. If you look around, everything has a usefulness. Even an old ladder that you put on the floor will link the floor and the ceiling or the floor or some picture, and it's tremendously useful in your home. But perhaps there is nothing in your home that is used quite so much. as the flinging door to close you in and to let you out, to open and welcome guests, and a door is a very useful thing.
Now there's an old story about a politician, David Lloyd George, the Welsh Prime Minister of Great Britain. He came from the country parts of Wales, and he used to like occasionally to take some of his London business or his political friends down to his home country. And taking big walking sticks, they would say, let's go up for a walk in the open fresh air, far from the big smug of the city. And as they came in these little patchwork fields from field to field, They would come to gates, and there would be a gate from one little field, with its hedge and ditch all the way round, it might be a two-acre field, into the next little field.
Those of you who've been to Britain will know what I'm talking about, the little patchwork fields of Britain. As they passed from field to field, David Lloyd George would always open the gate, and his guest would pass through. And then he would spend quite a time shutting that gate and seeing that the latch was fixed and give it a shake. One day one of his London friends said to him, Why do you bother to be so particular about the gates here? And he looked out over the field. Lloyd George said, Well, you're not a countryman. You don't know. He said, you look over in that field over there, you can see perhaps twenty cows.
And he said, they'll graze and slowly move round and they'll come to this gate and they'll edge against it and if it's open they'll slip through into the next field. And he said, if those gates weren't closed, you could find your cow to strain three, four, five fields away. He said, you see, a gate must be latched and closed to keep things in their rightful place. Now, this is what I want to teach tonight. I want to teach the value of the shut door, the closed door. What can happen behind that door and why that door should be closed, and without the closing of it, things don't happen.
Let's look for a key verse in the New Testament teaching in Matthew six for this. Matthew six and verse six. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, thy inner chamber. And when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Now Abraham used to pray under a big oak tree at Mamre in the heat of the day, sitting, talking as friend to friend. Dear all Jonah prayed in the great big fish's belly down in the gurgling waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and his prayers shut up to glory. Nehemiah prayed with a cup in his hand as he was serving his king on the throne. A situation arose, and he says, So I prayed to the God of heaven, and these were men who were in touch with the eternal throne. And I know that most of you...
If not all of you, pray in your kitchen. Pray on your bed while you're relaxing. Pray in the car sometimes, even as you're speeding along a highway. This is praying without ceasing. But there are times when you've got to enter into a quiet inner chamber and shut the door. And without this, some of the deepest secrets that we are searching for this week will never be known. When thou hast shut the door, what does it really mean to shut the door?
Well, I know it means a material door, and I know that a quiet place is absolutely vital with a shut door, but it can't mean only that. I am thinking down in Guyana on the South American coast of a precious colored girl who teaches in one of the big Sunday schools down there, a sweeter girl of a nineteen years of age you could not see, and you see her in her cotton frock on a Sunday standing with her Bible and teaching her class and lingered and watched her. Watched her carefully, and I have found that she's a spiritual, glorious, victorious Christian.
One day she came to me and said, Mr. Wildish, would you visit my old auntie? She's very, very ill. And I went. There I stepped out into one of our yards. I wonder if you know what that word means. It's a big sort of... one third of an acre yard with one common water pipe and round it many little what you would call huts, one roomed huts where poor families live. And as I passed through the yard, the little Negro children were playing around, scores of them, and I thought they all had to go from these little huts to the same place to draw their water.
They have no such thing as electric light, little lamps in the hut. We mounted stairs and went into a little cabin, and there was a big bed, and on the bed was her auntie, a big spoutish woman, apparently very ill. And I talked with her, prayed with her. And after a bit... This precious girl about eighteen years of age has slipped through something. I said, you know, you've got a very precious and wonderful girl there. She said, haven't I? Oh, yes. She said she's a wonderful girl.
And I said, you live here together? Yes, she said, but her brother lives here as well, and so and so comes in occasionally to live with us. And I looked round the little room with the one big bed, and I thought of the old auntie sick in bed, and a girl of eighteen, and a brother who comes to sleep at night, and someone else. And if you don't know the conditions of poverty in many of the small hobbles and huts of your land, well, it's another side of life you haven't seen. And God was producing in circumstances like this, this precious, lovely Christian girl, victoriously seen in her public work in the Sunday school.
And I went back to think, and when I went back to think, I thought to myself, how in the world does that girl ever shut the door? Now I am absolutely convinced of this, that we have got to find a place where we can meet with God, where we can shut out the bustle of this old world, and it's in that secret place of meeting with God we shall find our solutions. Solutions that we need to make us victorious Christians.
And if you don't know anything about that secret place and that shut door, I'm not a bit surprised that you are not a victorious Christian. You may get all the theology of it. You may buy all the books and study them and answer every question. But if you don't know the secret of the shut door, a vital thing, isn't it? What does it mean to shut the door? Now behind those closed doors somehow the fullness of the power of God is revealed. And two women in this chapter with their deep, deep needs knew what it was to shut the door.
This is women's day, don't forget. The first one in the opening verses is the poor widow with her two sons in great distress. who learnt behind a shut door the secret of pouring in living faith the oil that she had in that little pot of oil into all the vessels till they were filled. Now I know some of you will question me, I don't mind a bit, as long as it produces a question that searches in your heart and makes you search for these things.
I don't whether you will know anything at all about the fullness of the Holy Ghost, unless you know the reason of the shut door. The shut door. God didn't do this thing publicly out there in the yard. He didn't do it out there in the great mass meeting. It was alone with God when the door was shut. That she took that pot of oil in her hand, and there came a moment when she said, I must do it in living faith. I don't understand this, and I can't explain this, but bless God it must be true.
Here we go. She poured, and it's full, and she poured, and it's full, and she poured, and it's full, and it's getting exciting. She's pouring, and pouring, and she says, Bring me another vessel, and they said, Mum, the last one's full. Two women in their deep needs, this first one, the amazing moment when faith began to pour. Now, can you tell me a moment in your life when you first looked into the face of Jesus and said, Thank you for Calvary.
And there came to you peace and pardon and the knowledge of sins forgiven, and you said, By God's grace, I'm saved. I don't understand it, but I'm a child of God. I've been converted. I'm born again. I don't care what phrase you use. By grace ye are saved through faith. And there comes the first look of faith into the face of the Savior. And whether you know the time, the date, it doesn't matter very much, there came a beginning to that precious saving faith. that brought you pardon and you knew that your sins were forgiven and from that moment your soul with all its guilt is resting in the precious blood and finished work of Christ alone for pardon for cleanse now if I challenged you I believe most of you could tell of that happy day oh you say let me tell it but I stop and I ask you Can you tell me a day in your life when for the first time your faith said,
I'm a child of God and my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And I know it. And I am sealed of Christ's precious possession. And that gracious Holy Spirit of God ungrieved can fill me. My mind, my eyes, my ears, my lips, my hands, my feet, my everything, and I can know his gracious fullness. Lord, I'm just under your control. There's no watertight compartment, no reserve. It's waking in the morning, his. Going through the day, his.
I'm facing the battles and tasks, his. Do you know this can take all the strain out of your Christian sperm? Did you know that? Oh, how many worried servants of God, you see, anxious, anxious about their next task, and how they're going to accomplish it. Wonder if I'll get on well, and wonder if they'll like my sermon, and it's all the anxiety, Ray. Lord? You've made every provision by thy spirit, and he's come into my life to magnify Christ, and to make Christ large in my life.
These hands, Christ's hands. These lips, Christ's lips. These feet, Christ's feet. For Christ lives in me. And in the power of an ungrieved Holy Spirit, he can fill all these depths. Have you ever had this experience, I wonder? You know, so many people do not realize this simple, simple fact of Romans one, verse sixteen and seventeen. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God up to salvation to everyone that believe it. You say, are you a believer?
I'm a believer. Good. For therein that's in the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. You say from faith to faith, yes. From faith, the first look of saving faith to Christ to faith, the just shall live by faith. The whole of the pathway, if it's ever going to be victorious, is a pathway of faith. a resting faith and a simple resting faith to believe that the Lord you look to is the Lord who by his spirit can possess his possessions and through those possessions accomplish his will in your life then you begin to rub the eye out not I but Christ he's going to do it he's big enough to do it all the time Now, in the second case, the second woman, it was not a widow, it was a farmer's wife.
Healthy, busy woman running the dairy and the farm and helping dear old hubby with the cows and the rest of it. And into her life came this man of God. And you know, she was so kind to him and his servant Gehazi. And one day they wanted to reward her, and she said, I want no reward from the king or the captain. I'm just so happy in my home. And do you know they made the promise that there would come to that home? A son she longed for. And it took place until the little boy was not only crawling but running around, and do you know what little boys are?
must be a farmer going out to help daddy bringing in the sheaves. And out there in the hot harvesting he gets the sunstroke. And my head, my head, he's carried back to the farmhouse and he sits in mother's lap and she rocks him. He dies. She takes him in and puts him on the prophet's bed in the prophet's chamber and she shuts the door. Little lad lies there. She saddles a donkey and she goes off on that long, long journey, twenty miles to get Elijah. When they turn round, Dehazai is told, now you go ahead, you take my official staff of office, and you go and put the staff on the child's face and see if the child will wake.
And that staff, that Lord of Elijah, I suppose, was representative of his wonderful prophetic power and strength with God. And it's encrusted today, yes, Jehazar. And he goes ahead, and Elijah said, Now, listen, would you like to go on with him? And she said, No, I'm staying with you. that you'll get there quicker to see the lad if you go with him he's going to not say how do you do or shalom or anyone to anything on the way he's not going to stop and obnob with people he's going direct i shall take quiet time i'm coming along i'll talk to folk on the way no i'm not going with him i'm going with you she waits when at last they come they go inside that door and in verse twenty one you find in this chapter they're face to face with the great problem there's the little child laid on the man of God's bed in verse twenty one and now they come and in verse thirty three
Elisha came into the house the child's dead laid upon his bed verse thirty three he went in therefore and shut the door upon them twain, just a living man and a dead boy. And behind that closed door something happened. You see what? A soul is quickened from death to life, a miracle, supernatural, inexplainable. Today they are trying and successfully trying to imitate this.
Anyone pulled out of a pond or a lake drowned immediately today. They try this mouth to mouth. But just what it meant for the prophet is he climbed onto that bed and he stretched himself upon the child and said, let me tell you, it's the children that stretch you. He embraced the child. He covered the child. He over, as it were, shadowed the child and brought to a cold, dead child warmth. But he climbs off the child in utter dependence and paces up and down the floor in that room, speaking to God, the giver of life, and he goes back to the child.
And then the miracle happens. The child is made of thine. The door's thrown open and mother comes and takes her child. Have you ever had an experience like this? Now, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever had an experience like this? Has there ever been a moment in your life when you have been an instrument in the hand of God to watch the quickening of a soul out of death? in trespasses and sins into life eternal life oh i believe i'm talking to soul winners many of you have had this joy again and again but you know i believe it's a joy that god good could give to ever so many more of his children you see not me the preacher has that joy the evangelist has that joy certain chosen souls Well, the gift of the evangelist is a very real one to the church.
He has a gift of storming the will and pleading for a decision. Very rarely, very rarely do you find an evangelist at the height of his power as a teacher of God's word. He may grow to be a teacher, and as he becomes a teacher, he will largely lose his gift of evangelism. It's a specialized gift. I've met some men all through their lives as soul winners. I've met others who've been used for fifteen, twenty, thirty years, and they've won thousands and thousands for Christ. And then, God says, now your ministry is over.
You can go on teaching, and in the evening of life they have taught the Word of God. They have matured into a teacher. These are the abiding gifts in the church. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about every Christian who has life being the means somehow to a grandchild, a neighbor to someone of bringing newness life. And far more souls are one, one by one like this than you would believe if you test the meeting. Oh, I know if I asked how many of you were saved in a great gospel campaign, many hands might go up.
If I said how many of you were saved as children at Mother's knee, quite a number of hands would go up. If I looked into your faces and said how many of you, by God's grace, were saved because someone loved you and came into close contact with you and warmed your heart, and all of a sudden you can't explain the miracle happens. this miracle is happening and God is using channels and we can be the channel I know when the last word is said we're channels only blessed master it's the Lord who does the quickening work but he uses the human lips and Many of you read when you were children that wonderful story, Alice in Wonderland.
I wonder what you thought of Alice in Wonderland. It was interesting around the table for you to tell me sometime what you thought of that fantasy. I've never met an older person than thirty years of age who's read it after thirty for the first time that didn't say what foolishness. Children lap it up. Even modern children do. And they go down Bunny Hole and they get into Alice's Wonderland and they meet all the characters. And it's the world of a child's fantasy. A wonderful book. Do you know who wrote it? Lewis Carroll. And Lewis Carroll understood the child's mind.
He loved the children. They tell me that when Lewis Carroll went in to see pictures in an art gallery, he would go from picture to picture and gaze, and all of a sudden he would stop at a picture. He would gaze at the picture, and then he would move a little to the left, and then a little to the right, and then he'd go down his knees like this, and look at the picture on his knees. And they said, why do you go on your knees to look at the picture? He said, I'm looking at the picture from a child's level. And he was always looking at things, as it were, through a child's eyes. And he understood, children. Oh, I wonder.
I just wonder if, perhaps tonight, these two amazing miracles, the woman's hand that took the pot of oil. Oh, it's impossible. As long as it's impossible, and you think so, it's impossible! Face says nothing is impossible with God. Here she comes, look. Fool! Fool! Fool! Fool! Until... Where's another vessel? All fool, Mama. The oil stays. And if you look into my face, dear pilgrim, those past fifty years of age and say it's not possible for me, then it's not possible for you.
But you say, is it possible? Of course it is. It doesn't matter whether you're sixty, seventy, eighty or ninety. The fullness of the Holy Spirit is possible. If you think it's impossible, you're going through life without it and you'll never taste it. Faith is the secret. Faith is the key that says, God says it. In that pot of oil, there's the answer behind this closed door. I'm alone with God. It's not men looking at me. It's not extravagance. Look at my debts. Look at my creditors pressing me.
Look at the peril of my boys. Look at the needs of my home. In faith I pour every day. In simple faith, the man of God went in behind the doors and shut those doors and stretched himself upon a child. And he said, I'll think as a child. I'll look as a child. I'll talk as a child. I'll work as a child. I'll get right down to the child's level in the closest contact. But all he could do was to warm the child's flesh. Oh, God, you are the light of you. Could you give life to this little boy that was born to this Shunum lady?
And he was quickened. Quickening's going on all over the world. Quickening out of death into life. It's happening. It's an amazing miracle. It's something you stand back and wonder when you see it. It's literally a soul being... made anew by an eternal birth of something that's going to abide as a new creation work forever. And why should you be out of it when God wants you in the thick of it? Now, how do we shut this door?
Here in my closing moments, I don't want you to be hurt. But I want to tell you, God says, be still and know that I am God. And we've got to get away from that rush and that bustle of the great big throbbing, legitimate world around us that makes all its demands. And we've got to get into a place even though we're in a crowd where somehow it's shut out. And we're alone with God in the stillness.
And God is willing to reveal himself there. And God always does his deep work in the stillness. Hard lessons to learn. A nice little study if you ever like to take it. The Red Sea they were told in the trap they found themselves in, with the Red Sea in front and hilly country on either side, and the Egyptians pursuing them behind, they were told to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. You can't do a thing about it.
It's all up. If it was you doing it, you're beaten. But if you'll stand still and let God bring this great salvation through, you'll see the water's opening. You'll see the enemy destroyed behind you. You'll be a separated people to God. You know, to little Ruth, dear little Ruth, the Moabited girl, when she was so upset about her romance and wondered what the future held in a strange country, the advice was given to still my daughter. Sit still, it's all working out all right. Precious girls, there's no need to pull too many strings to catch Boaz.
Sit still, my daughter, there's something working out all right, and you just sit still. And is it all right? You know this verse in Psalm forty six, be still and know that I am God, is a key verse and I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it. If only we spent more time in the stillness, you can use the old authorized word, the secret place or the closet. If only we spent time behind the shut door, what a transforming effect it would have upon our lives. It seems that from this place we can go out in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
It's from this place we can go out with the power of the Holy Spirit. It's from this place we go out to accomplish the things which normally would be battlegrounds where we are defeated. I wonder if you would be interested. I don't know if I've ever told you this before. But I learned a lesson when I was a young fellow. I was facing some problems, some real problems, and I felt the need to be alone with God. And so I started off after breakfast over the Essex Hill just near the River Thames in England, and I found a quiet spot under one of those spreading old English oak trees.
And behind me just here was a wheat field. The wheat had come up to its almost ripeness. And on this lovely summer's day I could look out and see the ships going up and down the Thames to London, and I sat there alone. alone to pray, to talk, when all of a sudden things began to happen. Oh no, don't get alarmed, don't get excited, don't get emotional, don't get psychic, nothing like that. I was just sitting there a lovely summer's day and speaking to God and the oak tree was over me and I had this beautiful setting when all of a sudden I saw a little bird fly over my head and I just looked up like this and I saw him pop into a little round hole that was only six feet above my head.
And as I sat there I saw another bird come and I saw these two birds, one mostly coming and going. And every time he came to this little hole, I heard little noises, and I saw little yellow beaks like this stretched up, and the mother bird was sticking some stuff down into these little open throats. And I sat there, very still. And I thought, goodness me, I know all their secrets. And I was a boy, I used to go birds nesting, and I used to go with Harry and Jim.
And the three of us would go with sticks in our hands around the English hedges, and we would dive into the hedges, and we would look for blackbirds and trusses' nests. And we would shout, Anything over there, Jim? No, Harold. Have you seen anything in those trees? And all the little world said, shh. Tell the rough, rude boys that have all gone by. You see, birds don't reveal their secrets to rough, rude, noisy boys. Any naturalist can tell you that. Then I was still, sitting still, two little birds revealed their secrets to me.
They told me that they had met each other, and he had said to she, how you do, she said every time, how you? And he said, could we go for a walk together? A fly, I mean. And so it went on until caught in days turned to a firm engagement, and they went house hunting, and they found this little spot up here, unoccupied for rent. And they built a lovely little nest, and they laid four little eggs in it, and there were four little babies in there now. And I knew the whole story of these birds just by stripping snow. And as I sat, I looked round and I saw him coming up out of his hole, an old English rabbit.
He looked around, perked his ears up, ran across to the corn, and I could see him now putting his paws up and pulling the corn down, to have a breakfast, some corn flakes for breakfast. When he had a good old eat of corn, and I was watching him out the corner of my eye, he sat there in the sunshine. I don't know whether he was shaving or what it was, scratching himself like this. He went slowly back to his hole. I thought, goodness me, when I was a boy, ten, eleven years ago I used to go hunting bunnies, and I used to get a stick and push it down their holes, and all the little fellows bit down the ground like this.
And I never saw one or got one, but now sitting still here, all these secrets are being revealed. And God is just like his handiwork. God does not reveal his deepest secrets to rough, rude, noisy, busy, rushing Christians who are always on the move. You say, we've got to keep busy. I know. But there's a balance. And as surely as God has written his principles, that every time I breathe in, I breathe out, and I breathe out, and I breathe in, and there's a balance, so in Christian work it's the same.
And you may toil and work for the Lord, but unless you know the secret place and the closed door, much of your labor will be utterly in vain. And you will know little of the fullness of the Spirit, little of the quickening power of God's Spirit in other lives, unless you know the secret of the Shabbos. Time is gone and I must let you go, but, oh, do you know this secret? I'm not advocating laziness. God hates lazy Christians, but I'm advocating a balance between that zeal and busyness and that laziness that is balanced.
And I'm going to ask all of you to take it to heart. Is it they that wait upon the Lord? They that go to the closet, the secret place, and shut the door and get alone with the Lord, something will happen. It always has, it always will. They will mount up on wings as eagles. They will run and not be weary. They will walk and not faint. They'll lift to the high places. They'll run the race with patience, successfully pressing toward the mark, and their walk will be worthy of the name of their master.
If, if they know what it is to wait on the law, do you? I ask you, lady, have you got a secret place? Have you got a closet, sir? Whatever that word means in our authorize. Have you got a place where you can shut everything out and keep those everythings in their rightful place so that you can be alone with the Lord? You'll say, yes, I go into our drawing room and I shut the door and I get down on my knees and I begin to pray and all of a sudden I remember that the dinner needs putting on or some milkman knocking at the door or a mailman might have left the mail outside and there are a thousand distractions.
Those so many Christians are robbed completely of the quiet place, of the communion. of that time of renewing. I'm not advocating laziness. If you know anything about eagles, you know that Mr. and Mrs. Eagle build their nest away up on the top of the mountains in some ledge. And then when the little eaglets are born, those little scraggie eaglets Day after day, mother and daddy eagle are swooping into the valleys to find rats and mice and fowls and rabbits and bring them up there to feed those little ones.
And if you know anything about eagles, you will know as those little tiny scraggy things get plumper and plumper and bigger and bigger. The mother and father are getting more and more scrawny and tattered, and their wings get tattered. And when at last they see that those little eaglets are ready to go out into life and they begin to push them toward the edge and the squalling little eaglets say, No, no, we want to stay here forever. Over you go and they're out a flappity, flappity, flappity, and they're going to die and a great big eagle comes underneath and bears them up, puts them back on the ledge again and they crawl back into the nest.
And after a few days the eagles take the nest and tear it to pieces and fling it aside. It's no more use. Then they see that they're able to do it. They push them over the side and there's no one to come underneath them. And they're flying over to that rock. And then from that rock to that rock. They've gone out into life to hunt for themselves now and left the mommy and daddy who've grown thin and scraggie and their fur, not their fur, their feathers look all scattered. And they just wait and rest and slip around and get a rabbit or something and eat it and share it and slowly the new feathers begin to grow.
And the strength and the weight begins to come back into their body. And they tell me that there comes the day when the eagle turns his eye to the sun. And all of a sudden he stretches his great wings. And he's gone! Like a bull's eye toward the sun. To height no other bird can ever go to. They that wait upon the Lord shall change their strength. They shall mount up on wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. I'm not talking about physical things.
You can go to the Ostropath and you can go to the Nature Führer and you can go to all the finest doctors and they'll tell you how to keep your body in good trim. I'm not talking about that. At this conference I'm talking about your spiritual life. And if your spiritual life is going to know the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and it's going to know the quickening power of God working through you, you must know God in the secret place. You must know what it is to shut the door. Shall we pray?
Lord, you know our heart longings as well as our deep, deep needs. Oh, how we long, very many of us, that our lives in the midday and evening of life might be lives that would enjoy the gracious, ungrieved, fullness of the Holy Spirit. We know his one object is to display Christ in us and through us to others. We would love to think that even in the closing years of our life we could be channels of blessing to those who are dead in trespasses and sin around us.
We could touch them and see them quickened by thy power. loving Lord we've just finished another study of thy word and we pray that thou would write upon us the words shut the door when thou hast shut the door or may we know how to keep everything in its rightful place and now Lord you're going out to the evening to the joy of fellowship and friendship recreation, refreshment. To our rooms many of us lay asleep and rest, and we ask that thou would give us thy watchcare for the night and refreshing and fitting for tomorrow.
Seep ever in our hearts the hope of thy coming that soon our faith will give way to sight, and give to us a strong spirit of adventure as Christians, to realize how exciting it is, that we can be thy representatives day by day in a world that gives thee very little place. So write thy word upon all of our hearts. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, abide with us all. Thank you.