Living Hope Fellowship Church

THE GAP

Training Material

by Pastor Kevin Badgley

THE GAP

Preface

(intercessory prayer, translation)

          Ezekiel 22:30 says, “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.”

          Satan will buffet, pound, and hound you on your way to stand in that gap between man and God.  You have to pray, but once a person attains to that place, all things are possible. 

          You need a designated place to make an altar before God and pray.  That is how far away you are from God!

Some people used to be committed to prayer, and were going to go all the way, but they felt the torment and the clamoring of the flesh wanting to be satisfied with activity.  Look at your commitment level.  Jesus said in Luke 18:8, “. . . when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”

          Determine to pray through to victory by earnestly seeking God’s face!

THE GAP

by Pastor Kevin Badgley

          Ezekiel 22:30 says, “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.”

          Psalm 14:2 says, “The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God.”  Psalm 53:2 says almost exactly the same thing.

          When man fell in the garden of Eden a gap was formed.  In the beginning, God walked and talked with Adam and Eve like we walk and talk with each other.  Jesus brought that back when He came to earth as God’s Word clothed in flesh and walked and talked among men.           

          When sin entered because man rebelled, God had to put distance between Him and man.  If He didn’t, He would destroy him by just being around him, because God Almighty is a holy, awesome, consuming fire.  Wherever God is, He cleans it up!  If something is dirty, He will purge it with fire.  If a man is standing before him in iniquity, He will purge him with fire.  We don’t take fire very well.  That gap cannot be bridged except by the hand of God. 

          There have been many men and women of faith who believed God, even though they could not see Him.  If something is written in the Word of God, it is for you and me.  John 20:29 says, “Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” 

          God sent forth His Son to bridge that gap between us and God.  By the power of the Holy Ghost we can not only bridge it, but He can move us back and forth through that area.  This will take place as the Bride is preparing herself for the trumpet sounding for the rapture.  We believe this will take place some months before the coming of Christ Jesus. 

          When you stand in the presence of the Almighty God, it rubs off.  However, if you can’t get there, then you can’t get the touch from God that you need to be upright before Him.  There is a space, a span between us here and God in heaven.  God said an awesome thing.  He looks for a man to stand in the gap before Him.  That tells us that mankind can span it if they will call on the name of the Lord Jesus. 

Translation is not supposed to be an “occasional phenomenon” in the body of Christ.  At least by prayer, if not also by ministry, it is supposed to be an ongoing occurrence as easy and as common as healing, deliverance, talking in tongues, or any other manifestation of the power of God!

Jesus said in John 14:3, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” 

One of the dictionary definitions of gap is “cleft”.  When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God said he couldn’t see His face.  However, He said He would put His hand over him, and there was a place beside Him where he could stand and see His hinder parts.  That place was called the cleft in the rock. 

There is a place between man and God in the Spirit, a gap that can be stood in through prayer by faith.  Satan will buffet, and pound, and hound you on your way to get to that place.  However, once a person attains to that place, all things are possible.  Jesus said in Mark 16:17-18, “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”

Most of the church world today is not attaining to this, which is the normal believer’s standard!  There is a greater calling than this, and that is to stand in the gap, to go beyond just believing the Lord.  We need to pray into the place that Jesus has prepared for us.  Jesus made a way to cross that span by faith, prayer, and fasting.  We can get a hold of Him for whatever the need is.  This is where the first church operated in the Spirit. 

Peter was just a fisherman, subject to the same passions, devils, and pulls of the flesh that we are.  He was bought with the blood of Jesus and filled with the Holy Ghost.  He was no different from us, except that he prayed on a continual basis. 

1 Thessalonians 5:17 says, “Pray without ceasing.”  Something happens when you pray.  You may get fidgety and nervous.  That is the breakdown of your carnal nature.  However, if you will stay in prayer, the shuttering and quaking will stop, and you will enter into a peaceable realm.  This is what old timers used to call praying through!  The church world today does not want to hang around long enough to pray through.  It is difficult, vexing, tiring, and good place to take a nap.  You were wide awake as if you’d had an hundred hours of sleep and your feet were on fire, when you started praying. 

When you start pressing into that realm, and before you break through, you are going to be so sleepy, it is unbelievable!  The body goes “bananas”.  The mind says, Hey, you have got to wash the car!  Go do anything, but get me out of this place, because it is driving me crazy.  That is the carnal mind and nature, when you are actually warring against yourself.  I am talking about right before you get into the gap area. 

Picture this:  You are in the prayer closet, and you have determined to pray for two hours.  You are on your knees and there are nails in the carpet to make sure you stay awake today.  Your hands are up on the wall, and you are not sleeping during prayer time today! 

I used to get down on concrete and pray.  You don’t go to sleep in that position, because it hurts.  You move around a little.  You are not comfortable, because you are wrestling through, but you are NOT going to go to sleep.  Pretty soon, however, you get to thinking.  Ahhh.  I have to be doing something.  Surely, I am wasting time.  If somebody sees me, they will think I am lazy, because I am not doing anything.  What you are doing is wrestling through the flesh! 

Romans 8:7 says, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”  A few scriptures above that it says in Romans 7:24-25, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?  I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. . . .”

Whenever you pray, it is by faith that Christ has given.  When you move out in the Spirit and you are wrestling in the Spirit, the body of death comes on you to try to get you to go to sleep, quit, or go do something else.  It will give you an hundred acre list of things that you need to do instead of praying.  The day you die there will be a long list of things you need to get done that day, so you may as well get something done for God. 

Get where you can stand in the gap between this world and the realm God is in.  You will see people’s faces.  You will experience some of the same feelings, emotions, and things that they are going through, more than just the wrestling you are going through.  Have you prayed into this place? 

As you pray, you find out what you are made of!  As you hammer it out in prayer, believing God, and doing nothing else at the same time, it can be difficult.  Yet, prayer is NOT hard work.  There is no physical labor involved.  Anybody can pray, but not everybody will do it.  There are so many things to THINK about.  Quit thinking, and pray!  God gave you the Holy Ghost.  If you run out of people or things to pray for, you can take off in tongues and pray.  If you have the baptism of the Holy Ghost, you have the power to pray into the gap where God is waiting.

          The gap is as far away as you are from your prayer place.  You need a designated place to pray.  Go in the barn, the shed, the bathroom, somewhere.  Make yourself an altar before God and pray.  Some time when you feel like relaxing, go and pray instead.  That is how far away you are from God.

          When you start praying, you can feel the warfare starting between your ears – in your mind.  It is amazing that in your heart you want to seek God, and please Him, but your own mind fights it.  You have other things to do.  This is not what everybody else does.  How many other people out there are praying like you?  You have a list of “big time” preachers whom you don’t see praying, and you see them doing great things for God. 

          You are in warfare against the devil, and when he comes, you need to know how to handle him.  Nobody wants to go into that gap, but the greatest thing you can do in the Spirit for your own life, your church, and your family is to stay in prayer until you pray through.  There is only so long the devil can stay in there with you. 

Have you watched the people raise the wickets when the water is low at the dam at Olmsted?  When they get down to the last few, the water is rushing through there, because there is just a little bitty gap left.  The rest of the dam is already blocked off, so the river current is stronger there than anywhere else.  The resistance is greater at that point.  The last part of that is harder to raise against the current.

When you stand in the Spirit, and press into the place of the gap between heaven and earth, it is the most powerful and windy place you will ever find.  It has a greater amount of commotion, confusion, turmoil, and warfare than any other area.  If you quit, you feel immediate relief.  The problem is that you don’t get anywhere, and you don’t bridge the gap.  God is looking for someone willing to press in, pray through, and stand in that gap, take the reproach, take the hounding of the carnal mind, and then come out into that peace.

Something happens when you pray.  All of that will come against you.  Some will last five minutes, and others will last many hours.  One time I prayed continuously for nine hours.  I went fourteen hours with a friend, because I had help. 

Sometimes you have to be alone and pray, because God has to deal with YOU about certain things.  There is calm at the end of it.  You may feel like you are ready to die, but you know you have to get a hold of God.  That is what God is looking for.  Suddenly there is an opening, and you begin to experience things. 

Years ago a man named A. A. Allen got into an actual closet and prayed.  He didn’t say how long, because he didn’t want people to use it as their gauge for getting a hold of God.  He said it felt like he had been in there for days.  It may have been.  There were no lights in that room, and he said he wasn’t coming out of there until he got a hold of God.  He ended up coming out before victory, day after day and week after week.  

Finally, he determined in his heart that he was going to press in and get a hold of God.  He told his wife to lock the door from the outside!  He got to praying and wrestling and experienced the things we go through when we try to press into God.  Suddenly he broke through and a light appeared in the closet with him. 

We know that heaven and earth can’t contain the Lord, so you can imagine how crowded it got in that prayer closet when God got in there.  God gave him a list of things he needed to do.  He wrote them down on a piece of cardboard box that was in there.  They were things he must get out of his life and correct before he could have the miracle working power of God.  That is how his miracle ministry was born.  It took time, but as he marked them off the list, he shouted the victory. 

God will still talk today to mankind, but men have not prayed through into that gap.  The greatest torment is there until you pray through, but Jesus is always there, ready to meet every need.  He said He will never leave us nor forsake us.  He said he has prepared a place for us, but we have to pray through to that place!  He wasn’t talking about after you die and go to heaven or after the rapture.  He was talking about right now. 

Jesus prayed in John 17:24, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am. . . .”  Where was He?  He was still on the earth.  However, He was out in the Spirit praying to the Father in Gethsemane, right before He went to the cross. 

John 15:7 says, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”  This is an awesome promise, but something needs to happen to bring it to pass.  Praying through into the gap is the secret that will make it start and then blossom into revival.  We are pressing into that area.  

Would you like to see Jesus with your natural eyes?  Deuteronomy 30:14 says, “But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.”  He put a word in our mouth by the power of the Holy Ghost so we can pray in tongues.  Begin to pray out in the Spirit after your regular prayers of intercession.  You don’t know what you are saying or where you are going, but you know you are obeying God.

Jude 1:20 says, “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,”  You are praying into the presence of God!  As it comes out of you, it starts saturating you and killing the old carnal ways.  The warfare starts and you are in your death throes.  Things happen; it overpowers you and brings you into subjection to God.  Peace comes, and suddenly Christ is standing there. 

Matthew 18:20 says, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” 

John 4:24 says, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”  What does He do so we can get there?  He gives us of His Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Ghost.  What do we do so we can get there?  We yield over to God and build ourselves up in our most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.

As you transcend over into the Spirit, you are walking and talking in the Spirit, and you can see God.  Matthew 5:8 says, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”  This is how it works.  You can see God if you will pray and don’t quit till you get through.  Don’t quit till you see God.  Maybe you start out fervently, but in fifteen minutes you have to go to the restroom.  Then something else happens. 

You can pray into the presence of Jesus if you are saved and filled with the Holy Ghost.  Many times we become discouraged by what we do not see happening around us.  Everything we have is by faith and by the grace of God.  Sinners need to see a church that has laid eyes on the Living God they worship.  It is one so filled with God that they don’t care what the world says, and they are manifesting the presence of Jesus Christ in every service.  Then people can feel God on the Christians in the community.

Smith Wigglesworth was an awesome man of God.  He was always in contact with God, and he lived prayed through.  He wouldn’t go fifteen minutes without talking about Jesus.  You could barely make conversation with him, because he wasn’t interested in anything but God.  A girl invited him to a square dance, knowing he was a preacher, and that it was a no no for him.  He prayed about it, and said he would go on one condition.  He wanted to have prayer before they began.  Sure, why not?  No big deal. 

He walked into a packed out barn dance.  His wife had been dead for some time, and the girl who invited him told him to pick out a girl, but he said he wanted to pray first.  He bowed his head and prayed.  When he looked up, everybody was flat as a pancake on the floor.  When he bowed his head, he was immediately in the Spirit and in the gap between him and God, and when he came back he wasn’t the same man anymore.  Something was on him that came straight from the throne.  Mere flesh and blood couldn’t stand in the presence of an awesome God! 

He prayed through to the gap between God and man and stood there while God gave him provision to come back into this world and bring a little of heaven with him.  You have somebody like that around, and you will have revival whether the devil likes it or not.

One time he was laying hands on the sick and praying for them in Sweden.  They were going to throw him in jail for practicing medicine without a license.  The medical people were mad because the people were getting healed.  They plea bargained with Wigglesworth.  If you don’t touch them or minister one on one, we will drop the charges against you.  He agreed, and returned to the park after he was released on bail.  He told the people that he could not lay hands on the sick there, so he said, You lay hands on yourself and I am going to pray.  Thousands were in that park, but it didn’t matter how severe the affliction, Wigglesworth told them to lay their hands on the part that needed healing.  He prayed, and they started getting healed!  In that place everybody got touched by the power that was in the word of the man of God.

Every trouble and hassle the devil gives you will be another laugh in his face when you cross that gap that stands right in front of you.  Jesus is only a hair’s breadth away, on the other side of that “wall”.  You have prayed up to that point, and now you are into the wrestling.  If you will stay there until you pray through, Jesus is just on the other side. 

This is a secret in the Spirit.  Some people used to be committed to prayer, and were going to go all the way, but they felt the torment and the clamoring of the flesh wanting to be satisfied with activity.  Not many people can just sit.  Be still in your prayer closet and seek God.  Look at your commitment level.  Jesus said in Luke 18:8, “. . . when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”

God is looking for faith, for somebody to stand in the gap, and for someone who understands these things but will go on despite the trouble.  In Revelation 22:12 Jesus said, “And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” 

When you are going through all that struggle and trial, you are being purged and purified.  You are being sanctified, and soon it is like you have gone through some kind of a wall.  There is joy and peace there.  Don’t be afraid when the Lord starts talking, even though you know what He has power to do. 

In the summer of 1991 we were greatly blessed, because occasionally the Lord would open up the windows of heaven.  There was a spot in the front of the church where I could sense the presence of the Lord and I could see light shooting in the Spirit. 

We let the people know that if they needed a touch from heaven, they needed to step in that area.  If you got IN that area, you could feel it.  Many fell out in the Spirit.  We have witnesses who were actually there.  Some were healed of heart trouble and other afflictions.  They were in the presence of God.  There was a window, and God was looking through the gap!  Contact was made between heaven and earth, because of prayer and fasting. 

Revival will come by those who have stood in the gap, received from the Lord, obeyed His commands, and come back and walked on the earth according to His Word.  When we abide in Christ, there won’t be any waiting and wrestling. 

I pray that God will move on every soul with the desire for the anointing that destroys every yoke according to Isaiah 10:27.  Determine to pray through to victory by earnestly seeking God’s face!

CONTACT INFORMATION:

PASTOR KEVIN BADGLEY

LIVING HOPE FELLOWSHIP, P. O. BOX 111, GRAND CHAIN, IL  62941

CHURCH / FAX (618) 634-2541

E-mail  livinghope@hughes.net

www.livinghopefellowshipchurch.org

These condensed Bible studies have been published to help new Christians in their new walk with the Lord.  Kevin Badgley, the author, is the pastor of Living Hope Fellowship Church.

This is a Living Hope Fellowship publication.