Cast Your Net On the Other Side

Cast Your Net On the Other Side

by Gertrude Dekock Keehn

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Before we have our prayer, I’d like to tell you something, a connection with that song. I have never heard that since the first camp that I was in at Koronis, when Glenn asked me to come along, and I was a complete stranger. And he said, “The singing may be a little hard for you to understand,” and that was the hymn they chose. You know, I was sort of very English then. I’ve dropped all the very now, but I was then. And I told him I wouldn’t do it. And they did all those exercises just like that. And I just truly thought, like a lot of people do, that somewhere they’d gone off the beam, you know. And I thought I’d watch for the good there was, but I knew that that couldn’t be right. So Glenn said to me, “Aren’t you going to join in?” And I said, “Never.” And he said, “No, I think you will.” I said, “No, I won’t.” And then he told Glenn Harding to play another one. That was a little worse. I won’t tell you what that was. And then by the end of the week, I was doing it just as energetically as everybody else. And so that brought back a lot of memories. Not actually of laughter, but of shock.

But I loved it tonight. Just loved it. Shall we bow our hearts in prayer? Heavenly Father, Thou art the word. And the word is within our own hearts when we listen to it. Grant that we have the ears to hear Thy word this night. We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

I thought tonight we’d take this subject of prayer and to present it in the manner that Jesus did. When I discovered some years ago what a perfect technique Jesus had for teaching prayer, I almost got lost in the patience of Him, the absolute patience with those men. Here was the Lord of all life who had conquered everything and was now Christed. And He was coming into the world to give His message and the actual living of that message. And yet He could take these men and start from the ABC and teach them how and what to pray. And the patience of Him. And the patience of Him. You know how I knew how patient He must be? Because I knew how patient He must be with me. We only know how patient He was and is when we discover how patient He is with us. Because although we might follow it in detail, how often do we trip up and don’t follow it at all. And so I can remember when I went through this life of Jesus to find out just what His idea of prayer was and how to do it. And through the years I have endeavored to do it that way. And I see now exactly the humor in His teaching and the patience, all those qualities that at last got into some of those dumb heads like ours are sometimes.

Always He was patient. And I will use the word you instead of thou. “And when you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites are. For they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. And then, verily, I say unto you, they have their reward.” Now, I had read that many times and hadn’t realized, oh, how quick they got their reward and it was worth nothing. Well, that was very well to be judging them, but what about me? And I can remember thinking, yes, I can remember being in that prayer group and was a little bit nervous of praying. And I can remember that I said a very nice prayer. And I can remember subtly feeling, I hope they all thought so. And I can remember many, many things. For instance, somebody would say, “Oh, that was a wonderful prayer.” I had my reward. That was what I was seeking. I had my reward. And I often looked into little things that I was doing and found how quick was the reward. No value at all because it came from men sought by my own subtleties. And so, you see, we’ve all done this. Perhaps sometimes even today, without thinking, we trip back into that Pharisee way of praying.

And then He says, “But you,” and this verse to me is one of the most exquisite verses in the Bible. Because it is so absolutely personal. So personal that if you ever doubted that the Spirit of God was within you, this verse would prove to you that He is. “But you, when you pray,” just think of the many you’s there are in this. “But you, when you pray, enter into your closet. And when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who seeth in secret will reward you openly.” A completely personal thing. To me, that is absolutely wonderful. Now, Jesus there was being very, very brilliant. Because He knew that anybody who was doing things that could not possibly please the Father would not dream of going in and shutting their door. They wouldn’t dream of going in at all. And so, He says, tell your Father in secret. Are there… Is there anybody here who just yet hasn’t been able to go and tell the Father everything in secret? You know, that’s a very, very close contact. To shut the door on everything and tell your Father in secret. Now, there’s more to it than that. Because further along in our spiritual life, there comes that wonderful challenge to tell no man.

But to tell the Father in secret. And you know, there’s a great joy there. At first, of course, it’s hard. Because it’s very natural to go and tell somebody. Some idea we’ve got. Or some wonderful thing that’s going to be. Some wonderful thing we’ve done. And wonderful thoughts that we’ve had. But He says, tell no man. Go within and tell your Father. And you know, it’s as though you go into a center of power. Such power that because it’s between you and the Father, nothing shatters it. Nothing scatters it. It is there. And whatever he said to the Father in secret is left alone with the Father for Him to carry through. Right to the end. With no interference of mortal mind. No interference of any friend saying, “I doubt if you’ll ever do that. It’s a big thing, you know. Think of the expense. Think of the expense. And do you think you’ll ever get enough wisdom to carry it through? I mean, it’s a big job for you. Do you feel strong enough?” All those loving suggestions that come from outside. When inside the Father says, “Tell Me all about it. Let’s talk about it. Let’s come together and reason it out.” And then He gives the ideas or perhaps waits a long time before the next step.

But if we still keep giving it to Him in secret, ultimately He rewards us openly. Some of you have had this experience and you must have had your friends say to you, “I don’t understand it. Whatever you want to carry through gets carried through.” And so quickly, and it may have been years that you told your Father in secret, and your Father brought it about, yes, right at the right time, in the right way, through the right people, in the right place. And it looked as though all you did was say, “Father, I’m ready,” and it comes. No, it’s telling Him in secret. And let Him take His own time to shape it. Because He knows when it must be manifested. He knows when you’re going to need it. He knows when you’ve got to do it. He knows whom you have to meet. And so this Lord of your being is capable of taking what you tell Him in secret and rewarding you openly. So Jesus gave a tremendous truth in that one verse. Then He says, “When you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do.” And I love in place of that word heathen, foreigners to the truth. Foreigners to the truth. When you pray, use not vain repetitions as foreigners to the truth do.

“For they think that they will be heard for their much speaking.” Have we ever done that? Have we ever done that? Tell Him in the morning. Tell Him at noon. Tell Him at night. Wake up next morning. Tell Him again. Keep on telling Him. Vain repetition. Vain repetition. Why is there such a thing in our prayers? Why is it we don’t ask Him once? Leave it. He knows what to do. Why do we keep on? Because we do not believe in the closeness of His Spirit. He has the ear that hears. And before we call, He answers. So why do we keep on with vain repetition? Somebody told me once that when she’s asked to pray for somebody, she does it for seven days. And then if she hears nothing from the person, she drops that name and she starts praying for another one. Well, I said, now, supposing you were asked to pray for that person on Saturday and say she was healed on Sunday. You’d go on all the week praying for her? Well, she said, “I wouldn’t know.” I said, “No, you wouldn’t know.” But the point is this. If you really pray and you give it to the Father, I mean give it to the Father, like some of us have been doing in the prayer groups this week, literally shedding it.

One lady told me this week that she felt as if something had fallen from her shoulders. She meant her heart. But that’s how she felt. She’d lost her burden. Well, it had been given. It had been given. If you take a watch to be repaired or your radio to be repaired, do you keep going into that man every single day and saying, “Will you repair my watch?” “Will you mend my radio?” Do you keep right on? And if your child comes to you for a little pocket money and you say, “Yes, I’ll give that to you Friday.” Would you like it if that child came to you several times a day until Friday? “Could I have some pocket money?” You’d say, “I told you that you could have it.” And your Father says, “It is My pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It is His pleasure that all the things you need in life and for your spiritual welfare will be given to you. So therefore, this vain repetition is really, well, sometimes I wonder whether it isn’t because we don’t believe He hears at all. There is one point there, though, that if we have a truth, a truth that we can’t yet realize, it is good to keep saying that to oneself till at last the truth of it dawns on you.

Like many Easterners have said, if they keep saying the name of God so that they’ve got nothing else in their mind, at last this name is established in their consciousness. Yes, that may be very good. But to talk to God, to ask God, to approach Him with something constantly, I am sure Jesus meant we were not to do that, when He said, “Use not vain repetitions.” He says, “Now be not like them. Your Father knows what you have need of before you ask Him.” Oh, isn’t that wonderful that He loves us to come to Him, but He knows before we ever come what we need. And so then He told us how to pray. And you know that prayer. We need not go through that. But do you know, friends, if that Lord’s prayer had been prayed with full realization just for one century and much less, but we’ll say, one century after He had gone away, why, this whole world would now be a visible kingdom of God. Because if everybody had really said it and had lived those Beatitudes so that they were bringing about the kingdom in their own lives, can’t you see that very shortly it would come? How do we know it would shortly have come? Because if one of us here practice this and carry out these Beatitudes in our daily lives, which are the attitudes of being, why, we too can say, “The kingdom has come in my life.”

I find that everything that comes to me comes now from God through channels, wisdom, a gem out of a book, a truth that a child utters. All these things now are coming to me. I’m getting kingdom teaching. God is teaching me. Everything I possess is now coming from my Father. Everything I give, I feel is given from Him. I’m using His substance. And so if any one of us have reached that, why, we know how quickly the kingdom of God can be established. We know that it can be here and now. And we know that we are in the world, but not of it. And we know that we shall never want. And we know that He will put the words into our mouth, what we shall say. We know these things if we live in His kingdom by keeping His commandments. And so ultimately this prayer, the Lord’s prayer, would be said something like this. Our Father. It will always be our because the our means we’re all one. Our Father, Thou art in heaven and I do hallow Thy name. And it would be said with such joy, Thy kingdom has come into my life and Thy will is being done all day long in my life as it is in heaven. Thou hast given me every day my daily bread and Thou hast forgiven me my trespasses as I have forgiven those who trespassed against me.

And I have been led into temptation but Thou hast delivered me from evil for Thine is forever the kingdom, the power and the glory. And the day will come when every soul will not have to say, Thy kingdom come, they will say, It has come. So you see, Jesus was giving them a positive prayer, a beginning that would last eternally till they could say, It has come. So how wonderful He was. He gave these beautiful, positive truths in that prayer. Well then, we don’t hear too much about prayer, actually, till we get to that chapter where He says, “Ask and it shall be given you.” And I will tell you what I discovered out of this. “Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” But do you realize He didn’t say there, but be careful what you ask for. He didn’t say be careful at which door you are knocking. He didn’t say be careful how what you are seeking. And I believe He did that for a reason. I believe it because of the circumstances in my own life. I can remember as a little child, when mother and father wouldn’t give me the things I wanted, I used to think, well, it doesn’t matter.

I’ll go upstairs and I’ll ask God, He will. A little simple idea that if God made this big world in me, I couldn’t see why He couldn’t give me a little thing I wanted. Now, I learned that whatever I asked Him for, I could have. And invariably, I received it in the strangest ways to my parents. They couldn’t understand it. But look, Jesus didn’t say, be careful here what you ask for. He simply stated that it’s a law because He said, “Now, what man is there of you that if your son would ask you for bread, would you give him a stone?” Wouldn’t you give him exactly what he asked for? Of course you would. And He said, if he asked you for a fish, would you give him a serpent? No, you would give him what he asked for. He was sharing what common sense this was. To ask, you would receive. And the thing you asked for, you would get. Because you believed you would get it. So, He said this, and, oh, friends, I’m sure you, as well as I, learned through the years that I wished I hadn’t asked for certain things with this great big belief that I would get it. Because it took me longer to get rid of it.

There’s a funny little story told about a woman who prayed that she would get a husband for five years, and she said it took her ten years to get rid of him. Now, we know that’s silly, and we shouldn’t talk like that, really. But still, the point is this. There are many things we have asked for, believing. You know that a very worldly businessman goes into that business, and he’s positive he’s going to make a success of it. He uses even the principles. He leaves out love. But he uses the principles. The principles. Desire, will to back it up, and positive that it will come into manifestation. And we see all around us in the world the manifestation of the power of man’s thinking and his belief in what he can get and what he can do. But, you see, minus the knowledge that God is the giver of every perfect gift, and God knows our needs, why, we can make an awful mess of our lives and bring into it a whole lot of things. I can remember going into a house once, and I saw a model of a car, a picture of a model of a car pinned on the wall. And they told me they’d been concentrating on that car for over a year, and they knew they were going to get it.

I said, “You better hurry up. It’ll be an old model.” Now, if God gives you something, if God gives you something, He’s going to give you what you need now for present-day use. And He gives you the very best. Remember, man doesn’t invent all the wonderful things without God, does he? The only reason he leaves God out is because he wants the fame and the glory, and he wants to commercialize it. These are the things that will pass away. Those things won’t last. But the things that God gives us, we are happy to use as we receive them, using it in His service. And of course, when it’s no longer necessary, it is discarded or taken away, because God says, “I make all things new.” You don’t have to hang on to the old things in case He can’t give you something a little better for your next job that He appoints you to have. I believe the freedom of the sons of God has never yet been fully realized. There is such a freedom and such a liberty in letting God choose for us that we have never realized what a joy that would be. To be so busy in His service, so busy in His kingdom, prompted by His voice, obeying His voice, forgetting what equipment we needed, forgetting how we’d ever get there, but just knowing we’re going to do it.

And then, all life is a surprise. Do you know that when you plan to do things and work out how much it will cost and whether there’ll be any over and all the rest of it, and even if you work it out very beautifully so that it’s safe for you to start, why, you don’t have any joy, you’re still working on every little division of the way you worked it out. But if you start off with God, oh, it’s such a surprise. He has such surprises when your mind is stayed upon Him. You’ll go to a place where you think it’s just going to be so flat and awful and you don’t see how you’re ever going to manage. And He says, “Now, now, now, I’m here. Where you see there is nothing, that’s where I am. Everything. Everything.” And that is the Father whom I have learned to love with all my heart. Now, Jesus didn’t get as far as this, telling them this. He wanted them to find out that as they asked, they might be sorry they’d asked. I’m positive He did. People today are knocking at the wrong doors for wisdom. They ought to be able to look into any door and realize that they have come to that, “I am the door.”

They’ve got the right door. Having the right door, they ought to be able to look into any door and pick out what is good and leave the chaff. They ought to be able to, but sometimes they are lured away because they have never consciously realized, “I am the door. And no man can come to the Father but by Me.” And those who would enter the kingdom in another way are like thieves and robbers climbing up the back door. There is a way, a perfect way to know the Father’s will for us and to receive His abundance. We will just skip over now until we get to John in chapter 16.

He’s going away. He’s given them three years of patient teaching, pure and patient teaching, realizing their mistakes, realizing they haven’t yet got the Spirit, realizing they don’t know the Father like He knows them. Yet He lived it. They saw Him manifest food for thousands. They saw Him never consider Himself, only others. They saw Him forever receiving from His Father everything He sought. They saw it. They watched it in His life. They saw that He had dominion over all of the earth as the original man was meant to have. So the old Adam, you see, was passing away. And this new Adam, the Christ, was revealing again what was from the beginning that man would have dominion over all things and possess all things. It was a gift. They didn’t have to sweat and toil and labor. Don’t you remember when they were straining to fish there and they got nothing? And I always love how Jesus said, “Well, cast your net the other side.” And then they didn’t know what to do with the load. And friends, that’s a lesson. Where are you casting your net? In your business? Are you casting your net in the selling of the goods you sell? Are you casting your net there? Because sometimes it won’t be full. Cast it the other side.

Let the God who has everything and wants to give it to you, let Him give it to you. Come back into that Garden of Eden and walk and talk with Him and eat of that tree of life. Don’t sweat and toil outside. Come back. Come back home. And He gives it all. Well, now here you see He’s going away. He’s finished His three years ministry. And the time has come when He has to go away. And He knows they’re going to be sad. And He knows they would feel lost. And there’s a little sadness in Him in a way, except that He has this amazing joy because He knows they’re going to receive His Spirit. And they won’t miss Him then. They won’t miss the man then because that heavy Spirit, that mighty, universal Spirit of Christ was going to come out of that frame, that mortal body, and be scattered and given to any soul who would receive Him. But what did He say to them? He said, “Now in that day when this shall happen, when I’m gone and the Holy Spirit comes, this is what will happen to you. In that day you will ask Me nothing.” No, because He wouldn’t be there. “In that day you will ask Me nothing.” You won’t have Me to ask.

“But verily I say unto you that whatsoever you will ask the Father in My name,” love’s name, the name of perfection, the name of crystal clear purity, if you will pray in that Spirit. Do we? Ask in My name. Now, I’ve often traced my prayers back and thought how quickly I said in Jesus’ name for His sake. I really should have said for Gertrude’s sake and in her name. Because you’re asking for things, not asking for grace, not asking for His presence, not asking to be filled with Him. We go the wrong way round. Fill me with Thyself, O Father, then I have all there is because He is God and there is none beside Him. And so He said, “Hitherto you have asked nothing in My name.” No, they just asked Him, just plain. “Ask, you shall receive, then your joy will be full.” Why would it be full? Because they wouldn’t have to think today He’s giving it and tomorrow He isn’t, but your joy is full when you pray this way. And then He said, “These things I have spoken unto you in proverbs up to now, but now the time has come. And I shall no longer speak to you in proverbs because I’m going to show you plainly the Father.”

Plainly. He’d revealed the Father in His life, but He was going away. And now I’m going to reveal the Father to you. This is what He says. “At that day you will ask in My name.” That’s all you’ll be able to do. “And I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you.” My, that must have been a dreadful shock. They wouldn’t have the man Jesus now to pray to the Father for them. They’ve got to learn that that Spirit was going to be in them and that Spirit would make intercession. That Spirit would pray. That Spirit would speak. That Spirit would bring their needs. That Spirit would be their strength. That Spirit would uphold them in times of persecution and being in jail. That Spirit would say, “Go forth from prison and do it again,” which Peter could never have done before. Peter denied Him. He was so frightened. But when the Spirit came into him, he was able to do what Jesus would do. Now, He says, that even I will not pray for you then. And then He made the most exquisite statement. “For the Father Himself loveth you because you have loved Me and have believed that I came out from God.” Now, this has been my discovery and I’m sure it has been yours, that as we yield ourself and all our desires and all the things we think we want and need and we seem empty and void, then the Father places His very own desires within you and you begin to desire with His desire.

And His desire is only that all men should find this glorious way of life. So, when these desires come into us after we have received the Holy Spirit, we find that the desires are never for self but for everybody else. The self somehow seems to be swallowed up and our prayers change. And haven’t you watched it in prayer groups? I have. You start them off. You here have had the most amazing themes. For instance, to start right off with what we did. For a moment I’ve forgotten.

Humility and praise and adoration. Now, fancy somebody in tremendous trouble with all sorts of problems, not knowing what to do, starting off with praise and adoration. Why, it was the best thing that we could do to start like that because it was humble. My Father knows best what I need. My Father knows how to solve this problem. I don’t know how He’s going to do it. All I know is I can’t. So, I will praise You and I will glorify Your name and I adore You because I know You can do it. And there is your humility. So, we started off, didn’t we, with what the average person ends with after much faithlessness. They see God did it anyway for them. Then they praise and adore Him. How shocking. To look in that face with such remorse and say, “I didn’t trust You till I saw the goods.” That’s dreadful. That’s dreadful. And so, we started off right. Praise and adoration. First of all, can we bring ourselves to do that, friends? Only one way. By meditating much upon the wonder of God. By considering a lily. By looking right into the eyes of a child. By looking right into the eyes of a criminal. And seeing deep down there the anguish and the pain and the feeling of being lost.

That is the only way by meditating upon God in all things, in all places, in everyone. And most of all, to lose yourself in the vastness of it till you can’t comprehend Him. Like David said, “Oh, it’s too great for me. I can’t grasp it.” And then, you know, when he got to that terrific wonder of what God is, he said, “Oh, search my heart, Lord. See if there be any wicked way in me.”

Don’t you see that when you come to God and you give Him all this adoration and praise and love and abide in Him and feel Him all around you, feel that you touch Him in every atom of space, you’re part of Him. The very Spirit of you mingles with the Spirit in the universe, which is God. You’re part of Him. When you can get yourself, if it takes you five minutes, if it takes you an hour, if it takes you a day, persevere till you feel Him and then love Him. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. You will never weep when you come out of His presence. When you hand Him your little problems then, you will say, “Why, I’ve never been anywhere where I was positive it could be done.” And where I know in His great wisdom, He will decide the way it shall be done. And if He should choose to take away every single thing I thought was the right way that I should have it, I know that what He puts there will be better than I could ever have imagined. And so I will leave it with You, Father. I like Your way best. With my limited consciousness, I cannot possibly know what You think is best.

But with Your consciousness, You who know what I need before I could ask, then I’ll let You choose, Father. Day by day, moment by moment, I will let You choose. And when we let Him choose, He gives us the very best, better than we could ever imagine. There will be days when it looks as if He isn’t doing anything, anything at all. That’s when He is shaping it. Can’t you wait? Can’t you trust? If you take… You go to have a suit made and you choose your cloth, the first time you see it is when it’s all cut up and it’s all pinned together and it looks pretty grim as the tailor fits it on you. It looks as if it’s never going to be a suit. But don’t you trust the tailor with the making of it? You saw the cloth, you chose the design and you left the tailor to perform the job. When you come to God with your idea, knowing that He will be, oh, far superior to you in making that idea worthwhile, can’t you let Him clothe it? If you do, then that picture at the end will be beyond your imagination. And so the waiting time should be the thanksgiving time. And every day that it looks more and more impossible, you say, “I can’t wait.”

“I don’t know how to wait to see what You’re doing with this idea.” Not, “Oh, I don’t suppose He heard. I don’t suppose for one moment I’m ever going to get it. Well, I tried. I prayed. I can’t do more than that.” Oh, yes, you can. You can thank Him for carrying it out a better way than you could ever think of. And then your life is full of joy. That’s why Jesus said, “I will give you My joy. And Mine is a joy that no man can take away from you.” You know why? Because Jesus lived in secret with His Father. And He told His Father everything in secret. And His Father rewarded Him openly. We read He went away and He was alone all night. We read that when virtue went from Him, which was when people were pulling on Him, He went alone with His Father. Or He crossed over to the other side. Oh, friends, we can have renewal of God’s Spirit anytime, anywhere. Why don’t we avail ourselves of opportunities to meditate upon this wonderful God who waits to give us all we need. So the stages of prayer which Jesus taught to me are perfect. Just perfect. He even sets you free to do it your own way and find out how wrong you’d be.

You know, because we’re all like that. We hate to be told that’s the way you do it. No, Jesus gave you a way and left you to try it out because it was a principle. Try it out. And then say, “Well, it worked but I’m not happy about it.” No, you’re not happy because you didn’t ask Him. The right way you prayed amiss. The right way to pray is to praise Him and glorify Him and thank Him for everything day and night. One woman said to me, “How can I thank Him when I’m deaf?” I said, “Praise Him for your eyes.”

There’s always something to praise Him for and in the glory of this praise you do not feel the burden of these other things and they will so often melt away. And so, friends, Jesus was the most amazing teacher on prayer. And I have found that His method works like magic. And now, I pray that for the rest of my life, I will let Him place His desires in my heart. Oh, they’d be often not what I, as a person, might choose. But I’ve learned that He knows best and I’ve learned that the little quick thing that might come to me if I got my own way is nothing to be compared with this vast, encircling good. Because God never does anything for one person. It touches so many lives. If He does something for you and you’re in that idea that God did this for me, you begin using it for others like He did in you and you realize God does nothing really individually. It comes individually but He’s touching many lives. So, let us always praise Him first before we come groaning and moaning and pleading and panicky and, well, I don’t know whether He ever heard my panicky prayers. Of course, He doesn’t mind how we pray as long as we pray.

He doesn’t mind if we pray as long as we pray. He doesn’t mind. But, oh, friends, what kind of prayers? I can remember once saying to Him, “Lord, if You would only take this away from me, I know I could serve You.” He said, “How will I know? Serve Me now.” And I can remember years ago and I didn’t have health at all. I was terribly frail and delicate as a young girl. And I said, “Lord, if I had health, I truly would serve You.” He said, “Why don’t you use the little that you have and serve Me?” And I found that while I was using the little I had, He kept adding to it. You know, He gave me enough to go on with and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger. Use what you have. He took five loaves and those little fish, you know, and He fed 5,000. Use what you have and watch it multiply. Shall we pray? Oh, Heavenly Father, we love You. We adore You. And as we are here in this outdoor cathedral, we have the sky for the roof. We have all the little stars for the lamps. We have the grass for the floor. The trees for the pillars in the temple. We have all the beautiful birds.

They form a choir. It seems so holy here, Lord, so holy. But unless we find that inner place to pray, that inner closet where we are alone with Thee, we’ll never know the riches of Thy kingdom. Give us more grace to love Thee more. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.