This time, I think, is one of three occasions on which you have had teaching on prayer. I remember speaking to you about prayer two or three weeks ago, and I understand that you heard this spoken about last Wednesday.
I would like to turn you again to Ephesians 6, beginning at verse 10.
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints,
and on my behalf, that utterance may be given unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,
for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.—Ephesians 6:10-20
Then turn, if you will, to Matthew 18, verses 19 and 20.
Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father Who is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.—Matthew 18:19-20
And then, again in the same Gospel, Matthew 6, beginning at verse 5.
And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and, having shut thy door, pray to thy Father Who is in secret, and thy Father Who seeth in secret shall recompense thee.
And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.—Matthew 6:5-8
After this manner therefore pray ye:
Our Father Who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.—Matthew 6:9-13
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.—Matthew 6:14-15
Now, I would like this evening to say some more practical things about prayer. On our first evening together, I sought to underline one simple but all-important fact: this world is substantially and essentially a spiritual world.
We tend to think of it as a world that is only physical, and that there is a spiritual world coming. But there are thrones, visible and invisible. There are principalities, visible and invisible. There are world-rulers, visible and invisible. There are evil men entirely visible, and there are demonic beings, or spirits, that are invisible but nonetheless real.
It is only when the people of God wake up to this very simple but all-important fact—that this world is basically a spiritual world—that they begin to understand prayer. In fact, the things which we cannot see are the most important things. They are, for the most part, the eternal things.
But we are creatures of time and sense. Very sadly, when we are saved, we remain creatures of time and sense. Yet those who are redeemed of the Lord are the only people in the whole world who are, at one and the same time, on earth and in heavenly places in Christ.
They are actually, as it were, occupying a place in the heavenlies in the Lord Jesus, joined to Him, one with Him as body to head. They occupy a unique position. No other grouping, no other order of human beings, occupies the position that the church occupies on this earth.
We are both, at one and the same time, in the world but not of the world; on earth, but in heavenly places; living a physical life, located in physical bodies, and yet worshipping in spirit and truth. It is a tremendously important fact, and it is only when people begin to see these things that they wake up.
Now, in many ways, of course, this is characteristic of the new covenant and the age in which we now are. But it would be a complete and total mistake to think that, under the old covenant, everything was physical. It was not.
Isaiah’s whole ministry began by seeing a world that he could not see with physical sight. He saw the Lord high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. You cannot see the Lord with these physical eyes in that way, but Isaiah saw Him with the eyes of his heart.
He suddenly saw what in fact was true: the Lord was high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. It was not a make-believe picture that God danced before the eyes of His servant Isaiah. It was a window into what was actually the fact in the year that King Uzziah died.
In all that time of uncertainty, with the possibility of an evil king taking over, or some change in direction in the kingdom, God opened the window for Isaiah, and he saw what was the real truth—the real fact about everything.
Elisha’s whole ministry was spent in the physical, and yet he operated in the spiritual. The king of Syria became so fed up with Elisha that he thought his bedchamber was bugged. He said, “I whisper things in my bedchamber, and somehow or other Elisha hears them.”
How in the world did Elisha get to know what the king of Syria was saying in his bedchamber?
Even more interestingly, Elisha’s servant was like most of us: a child of God, devoted, a servant of the Lord, seeking to serve God, seeking to have an input into the purpose of God. Yet his whole horizon was bound and inhibited by what he saw.
So many of us who are children of God have got it just like this. We say we are born of God, but our whole horizon is a matter of time and sense—the things we feel, the things we see, the things we touch, the things we hear. These are the realities to us.
When these two—on the one hand, a man whose eyes were opened to a spiritual world, and on the other, a child of God whose eyes were not opened to the spiritual world—sought to operate together in the fulfilment of the purpose of God, the whole thing came unstuck.
And this is what happens to us. We come into a time of prayer, and virtually we come unstuck. We honestly do not know how to operate in a time of prayer because we are operating in that time of prayer as if only the things of time and sense are real.
No one is ever going to pray with fervour. Nobody is ever going to spend time in prolonged prayer. Nobody is going to go right through, not leaving a matter until it is finally done, unless they see through to the unseen; unless they have an understanding of the purpose of God; and unless they understand the spiritual forces arrayed against them that will seek to undo the fulfilment of that purpose.
Otherwise, we come into the time and just sort of sit there. We sort of nod, if we can keep awake. We hear one prayer, we hear another prayer, and then another prayer. If one is a little better, we say, “Amen,” and then we drop off again.
Our prayer time is just a matter of petitions, and it is very generalised. We cannot be specific because we do not see anything. How can you be specific if you do not see anything? All you can pray is, “Lord, bless America.”
In other words, it is the most noncommittal prayer imaginable. Nobody can say that you are being unspiritual. “Bless America”—it is up to the Lord to work that one out. You are not burning any bridges behind you. You are not committing yourself in any way at all.
Jesus said in one place, “Ye have not, because ye ask not.” James also said the same thing. Unless you are specific, you do not get anywhere in prayer. But to be specific, you have to have vision. The vision we need is to see through to the things which are invisible—the facts which actually are the determining factors.
For instance, for me this evening, the determining factor of everything in the people gathered here is that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Not that He might become Lord. Not that, if we are good enough, He may then exercise His lordship. Not that, if we all fall flat on our faces and cry and scream for a few hours, He will then start to exercise His authority.
No. Jesus is Lord whether we are dead or alive, whether we are asleep or awake. Jesus is Lord. That is a fact to me. That is a bigger fact than you sitting in these chairs.
You sitting in these chairs is only a matter of moments—if I shut up in time! You are only going to sit there for a limited span of time. What does that mean? But Jesus being Lord tonight is a fact which determines everything that has happened since the ascension.
Into His hands has been given all authority and all power in heaven and on earth. He is ruling until His enemies are made His footstool. This is the fact, whether we have Mao Tse-tung, Stalins, Adolf Hitlers, Mussolinis, Gorbachevs, Assads, Chiang Kai-sheks, or all the others.
It makes absolutely no difference at all. The Lord Jesus is on the throne. He is not even fighting; He is seated until His enemies are made His footstool. That is a fact.
This is why John the apostle said:
Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
—1 John 5:5
We overcome because we see that Jesus is the Son of God, and that His sonship has been vindicated; His Messiahship, His Messianic kingship, has been vindicated; and His finished work has been sealed and confirmed by His ascension to the right hand of God the Father.
Now, can you see that? Can you touch it with these hands? Can you taste it with these lips? Can you see it with these eyes? Can you hear it with these ears? No. But it is the fact in this world today.
That is what I mean about Elisha and his servant. Both of them were servants of God. One may have had greater authority than the other, but in their own way both were necessary. Someone had to cook Elisha’s dinner. Someone had to run around for the man of God, who was probably rather dozy at times in certain practical areas.
The servant had a very real job to do, and he was very necessary in the fulfilment of Elisha’s ministry. But there was one who saw things invisible and one who did not see things invisible.
When the king of Syria decided to get rid of the “bugging device” that was getting him down, he made an incursion into Israel and encircled the prophet in the place where he was staying. He intended finally to finish the old prophet once and for all.
The difference between these two servants of God—these two saved people—became a pattern.
Gehazi looked out and saw the Syrian army taking up position. He looked through one window and saw them taking up positions in one direction. He ran to another window and saw them taking up positions in that direction too. He looked around, and they were taking up positions everywhere.
It was too much for him. Whether he stole out the back door and went up to the top of the hill, I do not know, but he thought, “My goodness me, Elisha does not notice. We are finished. The enemy has known our operation. He is going to finish us altogether.”
Finally, he got to Elisha. I do not know what Elisha was doing. If we are very spiritual, we can imagine he was at prayer. But I sometimes think perhaps he was eating his breakfast or something like that—quite unspiritual!
He said, “Master, we are finished. We are surrounded by the Syrian army.”
And Elisha just looked at him, opened his mouth, and said, “Lord, open his eyes.”
God opened the servant’s eyes. Now, he was precisely the same in that moment of time. He still had the same structure, the same form, the same colour to his eyes, the same colour to his hair. Not a single thing changed about him.
And yet, when God opened his eyes, he became a different man. For in that single moment he saw that all around the mountain, stationed in every conceivable nook and cranny, were the hosts of God.
He suddenly realised, “There are more that are with us than there are with them.”
The funny thing was that they had been there one hour before. Nothing had changed. Do you mean to tell me that suddenly, because Gehazi had his eyes opened, God said, “Oh, quick! Move down there! Go, go, go! Take your positions straight away. The man’s eye is opening”?
No. There was no difference at all. The whole host of heaven was in position. The trouble was simply that Gehazi did not see it.
Elisha knew very well that either his time for martyrdom had come or the Lord was going to teach the king of Syria a very big lesson. As it was, the Lord did teach the king of Syria a very big lesson.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, this is our whole problem over prayer. We are like so many Gehazis trying to engage in prayer.
We love the Lord. We are saved. We really want to see the purpose of God fulfilled in this area. We want to see the body of Christ functioning. We want to see the church of God built up. We want to see people saved. We want to see the Lord manifesting Himself, expressing His love, His grace, His power, His mercy, His righteousness, and His truth.
We want to see all these things. But our problem is that there are enemies—all kinds of enemies.
Many of these enemies we can see: worldliness, affluence, prosperity, blindness in society, and a thousand and one other things. We see them all around us, and the problem is that we feel these things are sufficiently strong to frustrate the purpose of God.
If we do not see that, if the Lord has brought us together and given us vision, then the Lord intends to fulfil His purpose. We shall never, in the end, see the fulfilment of the purpose of God unless our eyes are opened.
This matter of seeing runs all the way through the Old Testament. Daniel had that amazing experience when he began to pray. I do not doubt for a moment that Daniel had no idea of the unseen world. He had a burden, and this is what so often happens with us.
We do not want to become spirit-centred, demon-conscious, or Satan-conscious all the time—finding every single thing to be “Satan, Satan, Satan; demon, demon; spirit, spirit, spirit.” That is unhealthy.
We want to become Christ-centred, Christ-conscious. But this does not mean that we do not see these spiritual forces. The wonderful thing is that God, in order that we do not become Satan-conscious, often directs us into real burdened prayer, and we have no idea of the forces we unleash.
When we begin to pray, seeing Him Who is Lord and Head over all things to the church; when we begin to pray as joined to Him; when we begin together to pray through a matter, we have no idea of the forces we unleash in the unseen world.
This is what is meant in Ephesians 3, where it says that through the church, unto the principalities and powers, might be made known the manifold wisdom of God. It is through the church functioning in action, joined to its Head and exercising the authority of the Head, that all these principalities and powers in the unseen world are instructed.
I believe this matter is strategic. It is not merely important; it is strategic.
We must be pathetically blind, and I would say to the point of being foolish, if we think the church of God is going to be built here without opposition. If you think that the gates of hell are not going to take note of any forward advance, any move into the fulfilment of God’s purpose for His people here or elsewhere, then we must be very blind.
We have been catapulted by our new birth into a conflict that began before time began.
Actually, in one sense, it has nothing to do with us. We are small fry. As far as Satan is concerned, he could blow at us all and we would all be flat on our backs.
But we are saved. We have been delivered from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. That is why he hates us: because the transference of our allegiance into the kingdom of God means that Satan sees us as rebels holding out against him. He will do anything to destroy us for that reason.
He knows better than anybody that when the bride starts to make herself ready, the coming of the Lord is very near. So we have to expect that, if we are people who have begun to understand something about the purpose of God, the church of God, and the ways of God, then we are going to have a tremendous amount of opposition.
And the marvellous thing is that Paul says in this Ephesian letter that all we have to do is stand.
We do not have to retreat. We do not have to take shelter underground. We do not have to try to ascend. We do not have to go either to the left or to the right, and we do not even have to go forward. All we have to do is stand.
Now, this is very interesting. Elsewhere we are told to walk. Elsewhere we are told to run in a race. So why does it say, in this battle concerning the purpose of God, “stand”?
First of all, because the battle is already won. All we really have to do is stand together and declare the fact that the battle is won and that God is going to have His way.
There are wiles of the devil; we stand against them. There is an evil day; we withstand in the evil day. And, having done everything, we stand. But where do we stand? Good point. Where do we stand?
We stand in Christ.
We very often hear messages on Ephesians 6 that are entirely personal, as if it were only a personal matter of putting on the armour. I have no doubt that every one of us has to put on the armour—to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh.
But it is interesting that in Ephesians 6 the apostle is speaking to the church. He is saying, “If you are going to see the fulfilment of all that I have sought to communicate to you by the Spirit of God in the previous chapters of this letter, you are going to have to put on Christ as armour. You have to put on the whole armour of God.”
So how do we come into a time of prayer? If we come into a time of prayer half asleep, you cannot blame the leadership, the circumstances, or anybody else for the sleepiness. If you come in sleepy, you can rest assured that about seventy per cent of the rest have also come in the same condition.
As I have said again and again, it is an interesting fact that whatever day you choose to have a prayer time will be the day that you all find the hardest day of the week.
We have tried to outwit the enemy at times. We took a prayer meeting from Monday evening because everybody said, “Monday evening, we are so weary and so tired. We can hardly drag ourselves to the time of prayer.”
We thought, perhaps it is Monday, the first day of the week. Everybody has to gear themselves up again to the routine of the week. So we moved it from Monday to Tuesday.
Within a month, Tuesday had become the day everybody was most tired on. I have been in other places where it was Wednesday, and they said, “It is the middle of the week. We are very tired in the middle of the week. Wednesday is a dreadful time.”
Other people have had prayer on Friday because they wanted to prepare for the weekend in prayer, and they said, “Friday is the most terrible time in the week. We are all worn out. The house is rushing around, the children come back from school, and everyone is ready for the weekend.”
But, in actual fact, it does not matter if you have a prayer time on any one of the seven days of the week. You will discover within a very short time that that is the day you are most tired, when everything will go wrong, when every conceivable possibility that would deter you, or give you a good excuse for not coming to the prayer time, will happen.
It is interesting, is it not?
So if we come into a time like this, carried half in spiritually on stretchers, or coming in on crutches in order to sit in the chair and let the rest take part—“Thank God, I have done my duty. I am here”—the fact of the matter is that the time is a sleepy time.
There are no joints of supply in the matter. They are all blocked.
We all think we are in a war, but we believe the war is an idealistic picture, an imaginative picture. Can you imagine what it would be like if the enemy were ranged in these trees with guns that you could not see? Would you just come in and sit down there, waiting to be shot like a sitting duck?
If you thought there were enemies in these trees with guns trained upon us, you might think that the best thing was to take cover and arm yourselves, so that perhaps you could pick them off before they picked you off.
But if you do not see a time of prayer as warfare, or as wrestling with these invisible persons, nobody is going to come into the time prepared. What we all do is come to the time, and during the course of the time we prepare ourselves.
Which means that an hour and a half after the time has begun, we are just about ready.
In other words, we have spent the whole time getting sorted out, geared up, and ready for the battle. Then someone says, “Well, brothers and sisters, I will see you on Sunday morning,” and we all go out the door.
We feel better for it because we have actually got prepared and sorted out, but it is a tragedy. It is a terrible non-redeeming of the time.
Sometimes we have thoughts that trouble us. Sometimes we have had battles with other people that still trouble us. Sometimes we have an unforgiving spirit following us. Sometimes we have bitterness. Sometimes we have some family or household matter getting at us.
Instead of getting here, taking a moment or two to bow our heads, getting all these things put away and under the blood of the Lamb, we spend the whole prayer time being sorted out.
We need to be able, in a spirit of determination, to say, “Now, Lord, I am in Christ. In all my problems, I am here in Christ.”
Is that not what the apostle says? “Finally, be strong in the Lord”—not knocked out apart from the Lord.
Some people say, “You are being a bit hard on us. You do not know how hard we work here in America. We are a capitalist society, and we have to work very hard. They grind us in these parts, and we come into these times absolutely wrecked.”
Well, dear brothers and sisters, do not talk to me about this. Go and talk to the Lord about it, because I think He will make short shrift of it. I think He will say, “Look here, it is perfectly clear that you will be a dead duck outside of Me. You will be, if not a dead duck, a lame one. But you can be strong in Me and in the strength of My might.”
That is a position of faith.
When the enemy tries to wear us out, get us down, make us tired, and overload us with things, you will find that half of it—if not two-thirds of it, if not the whole lot—will disappear with a step of faith, because it is not merely physical. It is in the unseen: pressure upon the mind.
A prayer time, when it is really in the Lord, is one in which you come in tired and go out with a swinging step. I mean it.
Oh, the times I have come into prayer meetings and thought, “Lord, they will carry me out in a coffin. I feel so tired. I have a headache; I have this; I have that; I have the other.”
But I thought, “No, Lord, this is too important. This is the enemy.” I sat there and said, “Lord, You are going to be my strength in this time. You are going to be my power.”
I do not know what happens, but when I go out—no headache, nothing else—I feel as if I could do two or three hours of work.
That is what happens when the Lord really comes in. It is so thrilling that it will actually renew you and revive you. If we came into this time like that, each time we came, right from the beginning as those mustered for war under the Captain of the Lord’s host, putting on the whole armour of God, I think we would quickly begin to see a difference in the atmosphere.
Now, will you please notice that this kind of prayer is a tackling of the sources of opposition? I do not mean by this that every single moment we have to be binding the devil or naming these forces.
But I want you to note the word the apostle uses: “against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies.” We wrestle.
It means that prayer is not just a time of petition. It is wrestling. Of course petition is included in a time of prayer, but this kind of prayer goes beyond petitions. That is why the apostle speaks of supplication and prayer in the Spirit.
Supplication is beseeching of the Lord, inquiring of the Lord, entreating the Lord. We do not know how to pray as we ought, so we supplicate the Lord as to how He would direct us.
But when we know how He would have us deal with a matter, or what the facts are in a matter, then we can begin to take it up in prayer. Then there has to be importunity—the kind of prayer of which the Lord Jesus said that men ought always to pray and not faint; the kind of prayer James spoke of as “the fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man.”
Some of us are by nature phlegmatic, and we must remain that way. If we are by nature that way, then best remain that way. But we must not copy one another in this matter.
There is nothing so warming, so inspiring, as fervency. I do not know what it is among some of the Lord’s people, but they feel it is not spiritual to get warm. The Greek word is “hot.”
Now, I do not mean getting so excited that you cannot get the words out. I do not mean anything like that. But I know that between some people’s words in prayer, I could take the dog around the block for a walk.
Thank God, it is not always like that. But if it becomes the common habit of everybody, how in the world is the time to move normally? We do not talk like that.
I have just come from the Deep South, and I must say I have never heard anything like it. Sometimes I could write a letter between two of their statements. Personally, I rather enjoy it because I am all the opposite by nature. I find opposites rather enjoyable.
But if everybody prayed like that, I would find it very hard to feel that we were getting anywhere. I would think, “Oh, I want to dynamite them all, or do something with them. Get them into it. Get them on with it.”
Thank God, we are all different. I imagine Elijah as a man who could run twenty miles and outdistance Ahab’s royal chariot and horses. I doubt that, in an emergency, he was too slow. I imagine he was quite a voluble person.
Be fervent. Be quiet in prayer if that is your nature. God works it all out. But the main thing is that a time of prayer is not merely a devotional exercise, a kind of responsibility or duty discharged.
We do not simply come in and say, “Oh, Lord, touch so-and-so who is ill.” Then someone else says, “Lord, we have some problems with the young people. Save them.” Then someone says, “Lord, those hostages are going to be shot tomorrow morning. If it is at all possible, put it off.”
We are not tackling anything.
The whole object of real prayer is to go beyond supplication to intercession. Prayer is an iceberg, and so is a corporate prayer time. All that is seen here is the ten per cent above the water.
People go out of these doors with burdens that have been kindled in the time, inspired in the time, and developed in the time. Their private kinds of prayer are revolutionised by our corporate kind of prayer because they have received direction as to how to pray over certain things.
They are not going to try to tackle big things on their own, but they are going to go on holding that matter before the Lord. When we come back together again, if the Holy Spirit directs, we take it up again. In the end, we see God answer prayer.
We used to keep a book years ago in Richmond, Surrey, in England, in the fellowship there. We did not want to find that each week we had forgotten the things for which we were praying. There was such a tendency to forget, and we were following some things through.
But the most exciting thing about that book was the answers. You would see something prayed for over two months, and then there would be, “Praise the Lord, such-and-such has been done.” Or there would be another thing prayed for just one week, and the next week we could praise the Lord because we had the answer.
There were some things that remained there over years and only yielded after years. But it was so interesting. We used to look back in that prayer book because it was the spiritual history and pilgrimage of a company of God’s children.
It was not simply coming together for an emotional exercise or merely discharging a responsibility. It was actually standing with God for things concerning His kingdom to be fulfilled on us, among us, and from us. We must expect that the Lord is more interested in that than we are.
In prayer, we do not stand politely distant from the actual handling of the problem. In prayer, we come into proximity—more than proximity—we come into contact with the problem.
As we come into grappling with the problems, we name over them the name of the Lord Jesus. We say with our lips what is the will of God concerning that problem, and we find that God acts.
That is prayer.
Time always flies when we get on a subject like this. But I read to you that word of our Lord Jesus about prayer in Matthew 18, where two or three are gathered together. We all know that verse.
But the prior statement is this: “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father Who is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.”
This kind of prayer described in Ephesians 6—this standing in the will of God—means first that the risen Lord, by the person of the Holy Spirit, has harmonised us.
Now, brothers and sisters, we cannot just harmonise ourselves by agreeing to agree. This is a fatal mistake in some quarters. The idea is that if you and I agree to agree, it is so uniquely miraculous for two saints to agree on any given matter that God will fall over Himself to do it, whatever it is, even if it is not His will.
The point is not, “I want this, and if you agree with me, God must do it.” The Lord does not say that. He says that where two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in the midst.
The Lord, in the midst of two or three believers, gives rise to the agreement.
This is such an exciting thing in a time of prayer, especially when we are facing very big problems. We find, as we pray, an identity of burdens. We are moving together.
Some people say that when two people have prayed about something, no one else should pray. That is legalistic. Sometimes we have a whole prayer time in which we pray on the same thing. Sometimes there are two or three prayer times in which we still do not have the witness that we are through.
But once we have that witness, then we can begin to praise the Lord. We do not have to take it up again. It would be unbelief to do so.
This mutuality in prayer is the secret of corporate prayer. We do not need long prayers. We do not need tremendous prayers loaded with biblical phraseology. You can have the sharpest, shortest prayers in the world when they are harmonised by the risen Lord in our midst, and they go like bullets into the target.
We have made such a mess of our times of corporate prayer because we all wander all over the place. One person stands up and prays for five things. Another person prays for three things. Someone prays for seven things. Then someone else departs altogether from anything that has been prayed for and prays for three totally different things.
Then someone else goes back to the original seven and adds another three. No wonder the time is heavy.
The Lord Jesus said, “Do not use vain repetitions, as the Gentiles.” Pray specifically. What an amazing pattern for prayer our Lord gave us. A child can understand it: direct, to the point, nothing generalised.
Our Father Who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts.
Lead us not into temptation.
Deliver us from the evil one.
There is not a single phrase, perhaps apart from the word “hallowed,” which a child could not basically grasp. We are not wandering through half of Obadiah to say, “Give us our daily bread.” We are not going right through the Red Sea, across the wilderness, over Jordan, and into the promised land in order to say, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
We do not even have to give a paraphrase of 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles to say, “Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”
We need to get to the point, be specific, and be together. Dear brothers and sisters, I really believe that this matter of prayer is tremendous. Once we learn some of these very simple lessons of prayer, there is nothing that can stop the purpose of God being fulfilled.
Basically, there are two things expressed by real prayer, apart from our being saved.
First, the Holy Spirit is the key, the beginning, the power, and the means of fulfilment in real prayer. Apart from the person of the Holy Spirit, there is no such thing as prayer in the Spirit.
That does not merely mean praying in tongues. Of course, praying in the Spirit includes praying in tongues, but praying in the Spirit means much more than only praying in tongues.
It means that we pray in the sphere of the Holy Spirit, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, and by the development of the Holy Spirit. That is how we pray in the Spirit.
We can talk about the Holy Spirit until we are blue in the face, but prayer is the key. When people are praying together, praying in harmony, moving ahead from mere petitions with an understanding of the will of God, standing with God for its fulfilment, standing against the forces that would frustrate the Lord, and standing with the Lord for the releasing of resurrection life and power, it is evidence of the Holy Spirit.
There is no other way for us to be practically, relevantly, and realistically linked to our Head in heaven than by the person of the Holy Spirit. No other way.
Knowledge of doctrine will not do it. Knowledge of truths, such as the purpose of God, the nature of the church, or the times in which we live, will not do it. Only the Holy Spirit.
The second thing that comes out in prayer is whether we know what it is to be crucified with Christ. When a group of people harmonise together, flow together, are corrected by the Spirit of God, and are disciplined, as it were, by the Holy Spirit in one another, it is the cross.
It is evidence that we have laid down our lives.
Much of our problem in prayer is, first of all, that we have traditions that have never gone to the cross. It is traditional for us to go all around the world in prayer. We heard it from childhood, so that is the way we are going to do it. It does not matter whether it is biblical or not; we were brought up that way.
Then other people have to display their tremendous knowledge of Scripture in prayer. If they would only lay down their lives, all that would go to the cross.
We do not have to find out that you are a walking Bible. Let the Lord know that. All we want to know is that you can get to the point in prayer—not go through the whole book of Jeremiah in one prayer.
All you are doing is exhibiting your knowledge, treating us to amazingly flowery language and great biblical language. This is the self.
Sometimes long prayers are very much the same thing. Jesus put it so beautifully. People seem to think that He had no humour. He said, in one thrust, “They have received their reward.”
He did not mean that one day they would be in hell. He meant that they had got exactly what they wanted: people’s attention. They stood on the corners, stood up in the synagogue, made a long prayer, and received their reward.
Everyone said, “So-and-so has been standing there for one solid hour. Can you believe it? Isn’t it marvellous?” He has got his reward. Everyone noticed him. It did not go unnoticed.
Some people use prayer meetings exactly like that. We do not go out on street corners anymore, but we have plenty of street corners in our prayer time. People stand up and pray so that we can all hear and think, “My word, someone has got it. Someone has insight.”
All we want is a direct, Holy Spirit-inspired word through your mouth that will be a link in the chain of prayer.
Well, I said I would close. I will close. But I would like finally to say one last word about the role of leadership in corporate prayer.
The companies with which we are associated often fall into a kind of vacuum in the matter of leadership. What normally happens is this: those who are responsible brothers do not like too quickly to pray, because they are frightened to death that they will be imposing something on the church.
They think, “We should not let leadership like that come into our meetings. We have a body. We are members of the body.” So they hold back.
Then the very young ones—unless they are very young in the Lord, which can be quite refreshing—do not take part because they do not think it is their place, at the beginning, to open their mouths. So they hold back.
Then the sisters, young and old, say, “We do not feel it is right for us to pray unless one of the responsible brothers prays.” If one of them opens the way, they feel they can march in behind. So they opt out.
If we look around, we have nearly ruled everybody else out. We are all sitting in a glorious vacuum.
That leaves not the young brothers and not the responsible brothers, but the brothers who have grown up. They are not officially responsible brothers in the fellowship, but they are responsible men.
Yet they feel that, if the responsible brothers do not utter a single note, neither will they. Then there is a total vacuum—except for those who have absolutely no idea about spirituality. They will launch in with prayers, then another will come, and another, and the whole time will just die.
This is as true of prayer as it is of the open time around the Lord’s table. We are all sitting in a vacuum.
Now, the role of leadership in prayer is all-important. If everybody does not make himself available to the Holy Spirit to lead in prayer, there can be no note sounded that witnesses in the hearts of others as being what the Lord is directing and the way in which He is taking us.
So we wait. Half the time is spent waiting for the right note to come.
Again, I would like to say to responsible brothers: see your responsible-brother role at the door. When you come in, come in as a member of the body. But come in as a member of the body with obviously more maturity and more character. Be available to the Lord from the beginning.
The best prayer meetings I have ever known have been those in which brothers who were really the most advanced in the company had, as it were, under the Spirit of God, led in the time. Then there is a strength, as if everyone can get into his position in the army and move together with the Lord.
How clever the enemy is in this whole thing. We are all sitting waiting.
I know this from my own experience. I used to sit in meetings thinking, “Well, I am not going to pray.” I had a pretty shrewd suspicion of what the Lord might be wanting us to note, the note He wanted to strike, and I thought, “I am not trying to strike it, because they will become dependent on me. I will keep my big mouth out.”
Then a few others keep their mouths shut, and a few others, and a few others, and the great company of sisters—and we are finished.
It is so simple. All it requires is for everybody to put outside, as it were, these ideas of heart and mind, and say, “Lord, I know that in here there is no distinction. We are here under the government of the Holy Spirit.”
It would be natural in an army for those who are a little older in the Lord to fire the first shot, so to speak. It would be a little odd if someone who had only handled a gun for a day started firing at the enemy while we all took cover.
It would be obvious to me that those who are a little older in the Lord would be the ones who fire the first shot, get the Lord’s mind, and say, “We are going through here. We are going through there.”
I do pray that these few thoughts on prayer may be a real help to you, because we are facing more and more problems and difficulties everywhere, all over the world.
What I believe the Holy Spirit is seeking to do is train men and women who can be intercessors. If He can do this with us, I believe the Lord is going to teach us more in the time of prayer than in any other meeting of the church.
We shall learn practically in the time of prayer more about spiritual principles, more about the lordship of Jesus, more about the direction of the Holy Spirit, more about hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches. All these things we shall learn together, and they will be lessons well worth learning.
I said I would close, and I will. The point is this: I have often said in Richmond, Surrey, in England, that I believe the prayer time teaches the young ones amongst us more about how to find the will of God, how to hear the Lord, how by faith to stand with the Lord, and how to endure and not faint until the purpose of the Lord is fulfilled.
When you are young in the Lord and on your own, you are full of fears and doubts. But when you are in a company like this, you quickly catch on. You see in your older brothers and sisters how they distinguish the will of God, how they hear what the Lord is saying, how they blend together in prayer, how they complement each other, and how the Lord actually shows us things and finally gives us the victory.
As a young person, you learn something about how to find the will of God for your own life by watching a company find the will of God. You learn all kinds of lessons in this time of prayer—about hearing the Lord, obeying the Lord, and enduring, so that through faith and patience we inherit the promises.
Well, may the Lord help us in this matter, because I believe, as I say, that it is strategic. We are all learners in this school.