Would you turn with me in the Old Covenant to Psalm 2?
Why do the nations rage,
And the peoples meditate a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying,
Let us break their bonds asunder,
And cast away their cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh:
The Lord will have them in derision.
Then will He speak unto them in His wrath,
And vex them in His sore displeasure:
Yet I have set My King
Upon My holy hill of Zion.
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said unto Me, Thou art My Son;
This day have I begotten Thee.
Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;
Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
And then, in the last book of the Bible, Revelation 12, from verse 7.
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels going forth to war with the dragon; and the dragon warred and his angels; and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, He that is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world: He was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him.
And I heard a great voice in heaven, saying, Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe for the earth and for the sea: because the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time.
And then in the second letter of the apostle Paul to Timothy, 2 Timothy 2:3-4:
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life, that he may please Him who enrolled him as a soldier.
And in 1 Timothy 1:18:
This charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy, according to the prophecies which led the way to thee, that by them thou mayest war the good warfare.
And 1 Timothy 6:12:
Fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called, and didst confess the good confession in the sight of many witnesses.
Just a word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we want to thank You that when we come together in a time like this, You have made specific provision for us. You have made a provision of anointing. Into that anointing, which You so dearly won for us at Calvary and made a living experience in the person of the Holy Spirit, by faith we stand this afternoon—for the speaking of Your Word, the translating of Your Word, and the hearing of Your Word.
Beloved Lord, fill this time with Yourself, with Your speaking, and with Your working; for we ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
I have been asked to speak on the subject of prayer, and I cannot think of any subject more vital, more strategic than this subject—especially when we are talking about digging again the wells, vision, seeing the Lord.
Unless we learn how to pray, how to come before the Lord, how to guard what the Lord does, how to preserve in life what the Lord does, how to, as it were, cover the charge given to us—whether it is the flock of God or the work of God—we shall lose everything.
Now, I have only three afternoons. These are the sleepiest sessions of the day. I do not mind if you go to sleep. I always say the same thing: you are perfectly at liberty to go to sleep if you feel you will get more that way than listening to me. But please do not disturb anybody else if you do go to sleep.
I believe that the Lord is well able to keep us awake in such a time as this, with such a subject.
I cannot possibly cover all the aspects of prayer, as you well know. I am not going to deal with private prayer as such, and I am not going to deal with prayer as meditation—digesting, as it were, the Word of God in the presence of God. Nor am I going to deal with prayer simply as petition and request.
I want to talk about prayer warfare.
I want to talk this afternoon about the divine strategy in prayer warfare. Then tomorrow I will talk about what to do when the enemy comes in like a flood. Then, in the third time I have responsibility, I want to talk about the divine call to intercession.
Every child of God, whether he or she knows it or not, is born into battle.
It is a conflict, actually, not of our making. Whether it is individual believers, assemblies and fellowships, or the work of God, all is born in conflict—in battle.
This battle is far greater than you and me. It is not something simply to do with ourselves, our unworthiness, our foolishness, or our weakness. It is a battle that is raging through the whole of time. It is a battle between God and Satan, between Christ and the spirit of Antichrist, between light and darkness.
It is a battle that has raged all through time. It began, actually, before time, and it will not end until our Lord returns.
This battle is much larger and broader than you and me, our little lives, the routine of our lives, our fellowships, the routine of our fellowships, and our service, all spanned by the few years that God gives us. This battle is far broader, far greater than that.
It is essentially not to do with flesh and blood. It is to do with principalities, powers, the world rulers of this darkness, and hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenly places. That is how the apostle Paul, by the Spirit, describes it in that amazing Ephesian letter, in the last chapter.
Of course, there is flesh and blood in it. Nevertheless, essentially it is to do with powers and principalities, world rulers of this darkness, and demonic spirits that you cannot see with these eyes, hear with these ears, or touch with these hands. They are invisible forces, as real—if not more real—than flesh and blood.
These invisible powers and principalities possess and influence flesh and blood. Of course, the battle has much to do with physical circumstances and physical situations, and we, because we are creatures of time and sense, often stop just there—at flesh and blood.
Then we get very angry with the flesh and blood involved in this battle. Or sometimes it is to do with physical circumstances and situations, and because we believe they are physical situations and circumstances, we believe we can change them in a physical way. In other words, we come at the problem on the level of flesh and blood and the physical.
But this is a battle far bigger than you and I. It is essentially a spiritual war. Woe betide any servant of God who does not recognize this simple fact.
Psalm 2 is a prophetic psalm. It is a Messianic psalm. It sums up the whole thing.
There is agitation in the world. There is upheaval in the world. There is turmoil in the world. Kings and rulers are involved, but behind them there is a force far more menacing, far more powerful, and more terrible than those kings and rulers.
The thrust is not, in the first place, against you and me, but against God and His Messiah. It is a rebellion against the Word of God, against the rule of God, against the purpose of God, against the kingdom of God, against everything that is to do with God and His Messiah.
If you are born of the Spirit, if you are a child of God, if you have been saved by the grace of God—however young you are, however old you are, whatever race you come from—whether you know it or not, you are born into this battle.
Your very deliverance from the powers of darkness and your transference from the authority of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son makes you an object of enemy spite and hatred.
Woe betide any work that is under the command of God and His Christ. What do I mean? The power is there. The blessing is there. The weapons are there. But any work that is under the headship of God, of His Christ, is a focal point of war.
The enemy will work unceasingly to destroy it, to divide it, to rot it, to compromise it, to bring it to a place where it has no power, where it is paralyzed, confused, and does not know how to stand before the Lord.
Any fellowship, any assembly, that begins to see the purpose of God, that begins to stand upon the foundation which God Himself has laid—that foundation being the Lord Jesus—once it begins to open its heart to all other believers simply as believers, to receive all who are received by the Lord Jesus, to look upon them as fellow members of the body of Christ, becomes a focal point of this war.
Woe betide any such fellowship that starts to function, begins to be built up, begins to move in the spiritual dimension, and begins to possess what is theirs in the Lord. That fellowship, that assembly, will become a focal point of this war. The enemy will do everything in his power to destroy it.
Therefore, Psalm 2 is prophetic in the sense that it is a window into the unseen. Whether in the Old Covenant or the New Covenant, whether back in the days of Israel or today in the twenty-first century, it is a window into the unseen.
And God says, “He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh. He will have them in derision.” Then comes the word: “Yet have I set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.”
Let them rage. Let the whole of hell conspire. Let the powers of darkness mobilize. Let them delude the saints and deceive some of the saints. The fact of the matter is, the King is seated on His holy hill in Zion. Nothing can budge Him. Nothing can in any way cause Him to fall back. Nothing can defeat Him. He is already at the right hand of God.
Now listen to this. The Father says to the Son, “Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Your possession.”
That is what the battle is all about. It is all about Zion, the King in Zion, and His inheritance from the nations, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. That is what the war is all about.
Move right over the whole of the Bible and come to another picture. I know that Revelation 12 also has a temporal meaning, in the sense that many would fit it into a particular time span. But, as Brother Sparks used to say, one of the best ways to look at the book of Revelation is to see it as symbolic of this whole warfare.
Here we see something tremendous: there was war in heaven.
I remember an old lady who came to the Lord very simply in a Billy Graham Crusade. She used to come every Friday morning for a cup of tea with us. She was very simply the Lord’s. She had never read her Bible. She was chief cook to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, and her husband was chief butler.
But she found the Lord in the most wonderful way and began to enjoy Him. One morning, at one of these Friday times, she suddenly dropped a bombshell: “I am not going to read the Bible any more.”
We looked at her and said, “You are not going to read the Bible? Whatever is going on?”
“I have been reading the Bible just like you said,” she said, “and this morning I read Revelation 12.”
So we said, “Well, what is wrong with Revelation 12?”
She said, “It says, ‘And there was war in heaven.’ I have had enough of it down here.”
So we did our best to explain to her that she would not be experiencing war in heaven.
This is an amazing picture of a war into which you and I, by the grace of God, have been introduced—a war bigger than us. It is a war between God and that old dragon, that old serpent, the devil, the deceiver, the accuser of the brethren.
He has been cast down upon the earth. His time is short—that is, by God’s standards, not ours. His time is short, and he is going around seeking to undo everything that God has done.
You and I are a threat, not in ourselves. I am no threat to Satan. If Satan wants to, he can just steamroll over me. But it is the Lord in me.
The fact is that on my head and on yours, if you are born of God, there is a mark. This mark is the mark that you belong to the Lamb, that there has been an incredible deliverance for you. You have been transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.
Therefore, whoever you are, however weak you are, however stupid you are—and many of us are—if you are saved by the grace of God, there is a mark, and the devil knows it. He will pursue you.
Even if you backslide, as some think, and join the enemy in order to get peace, he will destroy you. He will destroy your mind, and he will destroy your body.
He so hates those whom the Lord has saved, because we are, in that sense, a bell tolling out his end. He cannot bear it.
Brothers and sisters, do you not think it is an extraordinarily significant fact that when the apostle Paul, by the Spirit of God, receives this revelation—which, by the Spirit of God, he dictates, and which has become what we call the Ephesian letter—he ends the letter not with a call to have conferences, essential and important as that is; not to have lots of Bible studies, important as that is; not to evangelize, important as that is.
He ends it with this amazing word:
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.
Then he goes on: withstand in the evil day, and having done all, stand. He tells us about the armour: the helmet, the breastplate, the loins, the feet, the shield of faith. Then he says, taking 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 with all supplication.
What is he saying? He is saying this: if you and I begin to understand the purpose of God, if we begin to be envisioned, if we begin to see what the house of God is, if we begin to see the very heart of God to produce a Bride, and what that means in practical terms on this earth, in the localities in which we live, then we will lose everything if we do not learn that we are in a battle.
There is armour that we have to put on. We have to stand, and having done all, stand. We have to take the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and apply it to our local situations, our family situations, and our business situations. With that sword of the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication, we are to pray under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
We do not just survive. We triumph.
Dear brothers and sisters, there is no way that you and I can avoid this war.
I come from a country in which there are wars all the time. You live in a country that basically has not had a war on its soil since the Civil War. In many ways, because of that, you are afraid of war.
My goodness me, we only have to have a small bomb—not a big one, a small bomb—go up on one single corner in Jerusalem, in Haifa, or in Tel Aviv, and fifty thousand Americans cancel their trip. I do not blame you. I am just stating a fact.
But there are thousands of Christian believers who will do anything to avoid war. They want a bed of roses. They want to be carried into heaven. They want the church to nursemaid them. They want to be rocked and cosseted and coddled. They want to be spoon-fed. They want somehow or other to be wheeled into heaven.
I want to tell you something that you might find very unpalatable: you cannot avoid this war.
You and I cannot opt out of it. We cannot buy a ticket spiritually and fly off to somewhere that is peaceful.
I remember years ago listening and watching on television a young man and his wife who said he was tired of the rat race—in Canada, of all places. He said that he and his wife had decided to leave Canada and find somewhere on earth that was absolutely peaceful, where nothing would ever happen.
After much exploration, they reduced all the many places to three, and they chose one of those three. It was the Falkland Islands.
There they went to live. Then came the Falklands War, in which Margaret Thatcher sent the whole British Navy across the Atlantic to protect those little islands. A bomb fell upon their house and blew the whole thing to smithereens. They were all right.
Many Christians think they can opt out of this war. They can avoid it. You cannot avoid it. It is an unpalatable truth for some, but you might as well face it.
Are you a child of God? Then you are in a world that lies in the evil one. Are you a child of God? Then you have a mark upon your forehead and in your hands, which only spiritual powers see. It marks you as belonging to another kingdom. It marks you as belonging to God and His Messiah.
It means your destiny is His. His destiny is yours. The future for our Lord Jesus is your future. You have been marked with a mark, and Satan knows it.
So I do hope that I have made a little bit of sense in at least this first point: you are born into a war.
The whole of Israel’s history illustrates this. The whole of church history illustrates it. Wherever you turn, you will find it. Look anywhere in the Old Covenant: everywhere you see one means or another by which powers of darkness use flesh and blood somehow or other to undo the people of God, to compromise them, to defeat them, to enslave them, to make them something other than what God wanted them to be.
It is everywhere, everywhere you turn. Look at the history of the church. What a history. What conflict. What bloodshed. What sorrows. What divisions. What factions. What infighting.
And yet, through it all, the Spirit of God is in charge, fulfilling the purpose of God and enabling the people of God to triumph, so that in the end, if only in a remnant, the purpose of God is fulfilled.
Now, what is the divine strategy in this war? The strategy of God is to teach us to war the warfare.
The strategy of God is to turn us into good soldiers of the Lord Jesus the Messiah. That is the strategy of God. It is to teach us. Does this sound a strange thing to Christians who believe in peace?
There is no such thing as spiritual pacifism. Did you get that? There is no such thing as spiritual pacifism.
The enemy will eat you if he can while you are talking peace—while you are longing for lovely sunsets and sunrises and twittering birds on some beautiful isle, somewhere beyond any possibility of tension or trouble. The enemy is waiting to eat you, to devour you. Wake up.
There is only one possibility for the child of God: he has to have his fingers taught to war. He has to learn how to be under the Commander, the Lord of hosts.
Now, in the Hebrew, this marvellous term, “the Lord of hosts,” is a military term. “Commander of the armies of heaven” is another way you could translate it.
So you and I have to learn how to war this warfare. God does not launch us into this war without making full preparation and provision for us.
Did you note those Scriptures we read? Did you note how Paul said to Timothy—who, I do not know, perhaps we are being unfair to Timothy; one day we shall be able to find this one out when we meet him—but somehow we imagine Timothy as rather quiet, retiring, not as aggressive as the apostle Paul. You know what I mean.
And the apostle says, “Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Jesus the Messiah.”
That requires training. It requires strengthening. It requires muscles. It requires instruction in the way to use weapons. There is a lot involved.
“Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life to which you were called.” What does it mean? Listen: it implies that if you do not fight the good fight of faith, then you will die spiritually.
We have so many gravestones in our fellowships—memorial stones: “Here lies the body of so-and-so, born so-and-so spiritually, died so-and-so spiritually.” People who once were alive, who once were in the forefront of warfare, who once were right at the heart of everything—now, nothing.
Fight the good fight of faith. You have to apprehend that for which Christ apprehended you. So lay hold on it. You have to fight this good fight of faith and lay hold on life eternal to which you are called.
The life is there. You have to possess it. You have to appropriate it. You have to stand by faith into it. It is yours. It is a gift. It is not something given to you because you merit it or because you are in favour. It is because you are a child of God.
It is your birthright to be alive. It is your birthright to know life, and life more abundant. It is your birthright that you grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus.
Paul says to Timothy, “There were prophecies that led the way to you.” A little bit like David, the last boy among the seven. It sounds as if they would not have thought of Timothy unless the Lord had directed their attention to Timothy. Paul says, “I remember the prophecies that led the way to you. War the good warfare.”
In Psalm 18, we have a marvellous picture of this. I am sure many of you know this psalm. Listen to it. This is what I call a good thing for a soldier, a good spiritual soldier.
For by Thee I run upon a troop;
And by my God do I leap over a wall.
Now, I have to say, I could not leap over a wall—not in my present condition. There was a time when I could. But it takes a little bit of training to leap over a wall, and as for running through a troop, you need some training there.
Or look at Psalm 18:34:
He teacheth my hands to war;
So that mine arms do bend a bow of brass.
Well, nobody’s arms bend a bow of brass. This is some training, some exercise.
Look again at Psalm 18:39:
For Thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle:
Thou hast subdued under me those that rose up against me.
Thou hast also made mine enemies turn their backs unto me,
That I might cut off them that hate me.
That is worth thinking about for a little while, is it not? This whole matter: the Lord has eternal vocation in mind in training us.
Now, do not get me wrong. I do not mean by this that we shall be warring warfare in eternity. What I mean is this: He uses this war. God could finish it in a moment. He does not. Why? Because this war is the most useful means of training the people of God.
It trains them how to know the will of the Commander of the armies. It trains them how to relate to one another. A single mistake in a battle can bring loss. One person out of line, one miscalculation, one matter not coordinated, can lead to a defeat.
The Lord uses these battles. I sometimes wonder, when this happens, “Why does the Lord allow this?” In my little life, I have seen work after work come into an evil day.
That is when the enemy seems to have power to do anything, when it seems as if the Lord is a thousand miles away, when it seems as if everything is in bits and pieces. Why does the Lord allow it?
Interestingly, it is almost as if the Lord says, “If you want to suffer under the enemy, you can, until you learn how to rise up together, how to find the will of God, how to stand for the will of God, and how to deal with these demonic spirits that are seeking to influence and destroy the testimony of the Lord. Until you learn it, you will suffer.”
It is a rather hard attitude, but it is absolutely right, because all of us want to be carried.
To this battle, the Lord instructs and trains us. Now, if what I am saying is right, then we must expect very fierce opposition, very hard situations, very difficult problems.
We must expect all the characteristics of a war, and we must expect to win.
If we throw in the glove the moment the enemy appears, all is lost. It is part of the enemy’s propaganda to make us somehow or other succumb to the idea that he is all-powerful, and that we are so ridiculously weak and unworthy that there is no chance of winning this battle. But there is.
Now, I will talk more about that tomorrow, but what I want to say is this: the Lord has provided completely for this warfare.
Did you notice in Ephesians 6—verse 10, I think, and again in verse 13—“Put on the whole armour,” not just a little bit of the armour. Do not think, “Well, I do not like the helmet, but I will put on the breastplate. The helmet does not suit me. Somehow, it makes me look ridiculous.”
It is like fellows who go on motorbikes and do not want to wear a crash helmet. I do not know which girls they think are looking at them as they whizz by at a hundred miles an hour, but they do not like to have something on the head. Yet it is absolutely essential if, God forbid, you have an accident.
It does not say, “Put on armour.” It says, “Put on the whole armour.”
If you do not have something on your feet, you can tread on something, and you know it. Your foot may not be much, and the tack may be very small, whatever you tread on, but that little thing will cause an infection, and that is the end of you in the army. Do you understand?
Or you say, “I do not like the breastplate. I would really rather not have the breastplate on. I will put the helmet on, I will put the leggings on, and so on—but not the breastplate. It makes me feel claustrophobic.”
You have to put on the whole armour. The apostle says it twice: “Put on the whole armour.”
Now, I have said this before—I think even here in years gone by. I knew a brother who used to teach people that early in the morning, when they had their quiet time, they should stand in front of the mirror and put on the helmet, put on the breastplate, put on the loins, put on the feet.
I noticed that many of the people who did all this every morning were spiritually neurotic. They used to go through all this hunting: “Did I put that on, or did I not put it on?”
Look, you do not have to worry. It is the Lord Jesus. In another place, the apostle says, “Put on the Lord Jesus.” He is the armour. Put Him on.
In other words, listen: abide where God has placed you. It is true that Paul says, “Put on the whole armour,” but in actual fact this is armour you go to bed with. You stay in it all the time. It is the Lord Jesus. Abide where God has put you, and you are absolutely safe.
This armour is complete. Remember, there are stratagems of the devil. There are fiery darts. Sometimes these fiery darts were tipped with poison. The idea of the fiery dart was that somehow it could come through a vulnerable place: at the temple, where the helmet came down; it could strike in the temple or strike in an eye.
You remember King Harold of Britain. In the battle with William the Conqueror, an arrow went into his eye, and he died. You may have armour on your arms and breastplate, but in that single moment you are finished—or at least out of action. You are injured; you are a casualty.
I have known many servants of the Lord who have done so well, and then all of a sudden, they are gone. Why? A fiery dart. Sometimes it is some suspicion about another brother or another sister, some suspicion about the way of the Lord or the will of the Lord, and suddenly it is all over.
They never used the shield of faith, which can quench all the fiery darts of the evil one.
Then there is another interesting point. You will find it in Ephesians 6:13: an evil day. What does “evil day” mean?
Every work of the Lord has at least one evil day. Every assembly or fellowship has at least one evil day—many have a number of them. Every believer has, at some point, an evil day.
It is a day of fiery trial, a trial by fire. Sometimes it is persecution. Sometimes it is the loss of a job. Sometimes it is a relative who suddenly dies. Sometimes something simply goes wrong, and everything seems to be given over to the evil one.
We have a saying in English—I think it is more Irish than English, because nearly all these wonderful little sayings are more Irish than English. They always had more imagination. We say, “It never rains but it pours.”
In other words, everything goes wrong. Everything goes wrong. That is an evil day.
Why does the Lord allow evil days? Is that not a good question? You say, “Well, the Lord is so loving and so merciful. Surely He would protect us from evil days.”
No, the Lord does not, because we have to become good soldiers of the Lord Jesus. That is where we are put to the test. That is where all the lessons are, as it were, engraved within our spirit—in an evil day.
Thank God, an evil day is an evil day. It is not an evil year. It is a period of time limited by the grace of God. But in that period of time, let me tell you this: more happens in the evil day than ever happens in the day when everything goes wonderfully.
It is in those days that we learn our deepest lessons, come face to face with the Lord, and know Him in a way that we never knew Him before.
In that evil day, God gives us His Word. He takes His Word by the Holy Spirit and applies it, and that Word becomes yours. It can never be taken away.
Years ago, I knew a sister. In her drawing room she had a little thing up on the wall. I was sitting in this very beautiful, beautifully furnished, very exclusive, very upper-class room, and I saw this rough little piece of wood on the wall.
On it was written, “My peace I give to you.” And I thought to myself—God forgive me—how trite. “My peace I give to you.” Why did she put that up? Why did she not put up, “He is Lord of all,” or, “That in all things He might have the pre-eminence”?
In the end, I summoned up courage and asked her. I did not say anything about it being trite. I just said, “I noticed that.”
“Oh,” she said, “that was Amy Carmichael. She actually had that piece of wood cut. She actually painted that on there.”
“Oh,” I said, “really?”
She said, “Yes. You see, I went through a terrible time. I thought I was going to lose my mind. The battle was so enormous, and I was so confused. Nobody could help me. I opened the Bible, and it did not mean anything to me. I listened to messages, and they did not mean anything to me. All kinds of people counselled me, and it did not even enter into my spirit.”
“Then,” she said, “the Lord said to me, ‘My peace I give to you.’”
“And instantly I thought, ‘That is in John’s Gospel.’ I looked it up, and it said, ‘Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you.’”
Then she said, “The Lord said to me, ‘You see, the peace I leave with you is peace of sins forgiven. I never needed it. My peace is the peace I had in Gethsemane, when I said, “Not My will, but Thine, be done.”’”
That word brought her out of all her confusion. From then on, this little word that I had thought was so trite on the wall was hers in a way that it was never mine. It was hers. It had entered into her; it had become flesh and blood. It was the very meaning of her deliverance and her walk with the Lord.
Do you understand? It is so amazing that in an evil day, God can take a word, when everything seems as if the Lord is a thousand miles away, and He can make it yours. It is yours forever.
Because the Lord tells us to put on the whole armour, we do not have to fear the enemy. What is wrong with people? I do not understand Christians. I honestly do not. Well, I do not understand Jews either, but I mean, I do not understand Christians. Christians ought to be so different.
Why are they so afraid of the enemy? There is no need.
You are as safe as you can be safe in the whole armour of God. No one can touch you. In the Old Testament, we have these wonderful words: fortress, high tower, deep shelter, high place—all these wonderful words that speak of being hidden, being covered, absolutely safe in the Lord.
You have no need to be afraid. The only time you ought to be afraid is when the enemy gets you to come out of the armour. Once you are out, then you need to fear. But if you are abiding in Christ, remaining in Christ, there is no need to be afraid.
Dana quoted Norman Grubb this morning. I knew Norman Grubb very well. I came to the Lord through the book he wrote on C. T. Studd. That is how I found the Lord.
C. T. Studd—only a person from such an upper-class background could upset everybody as much as he upset them. He could not care less. He was Irish, again. He could not help it.
The thing that enraged the Christian world, the evangelical world, was his parody on the hymn “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” when he said:
Backward, chocolate soldier,
Marching as to war.
He wrote a little couplet:
Some Christians want to live within the sound
Of chapel chime and bell;
I’d rather run a rescue shop
Within a yard of hell.
Oh, that God would give such a spirit—not fear.
When you are properly clothed, you are not self-conscious. When you have the armour on, you can be in the war and you can be absolutely safe. There is no need to fear.
It does not matter how powerful the enemy is. It does not matter that there are principalities and powers. Can you imagine little you facing a principality, little you facing a power, little you facing a world ruler of this darkness? Now, I am not suggesting that you should. But I am just saying: hidden in Christ, together in Him, we can face principalities and powers, world rulers of this darkness, and hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenly places.
And it is close contact—wrestling. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities.” There is close contact with these powers, but you have no need to fear. As long as you stand, and withstand, and having done all, stand, the battle is won.
Dear brother, dear sister, the divine strategy is to do with prayer and supplication, praying at all seasons in the Spirit.
I have no problem with tongues. I know some do, but I do not have any problem with tongues, and never have. I do not mean counterfeit tongues; I mean the real thing. Nor do I believe in that nonsense that it went out in the first century.
Most Christians have no knowledge of church history, but those of us who do know that at all times in the history of the church these gifts of the Spirit have reappeared—whether it was the Paulicians, the Bogomils, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, long before the Reformation, the Anabaptists, the Huguenots, the prophets of Cévennes, or even in Wesley’s early meetings. He records it in his journal.
I do not have any problem with that. But to say that praying in the Spirit is praying in tongues, I think that is not right. Praying in the Spirit may include praying in tongues, but it is much more.
When you pray in the Spirit, you are praying under the anointing, under the command. You are, as it were, energized by the Spirit. This is not just request. This is not just petition. This is not just pouring out your heart.
This is the kind of prayer that is brought to birth by the Holy Spirit. It is something conceived by the Holy Spirit and energized by the Holy Spirit. That is praying in the Spirit. And we are told to pray at all seasons in the Spirit.
Beloved brothers and sisters, we have destroyed our prayer meetings.
The Lord does not need an enemy when He has us. Really, I mean it.
You go to a prayer meeting. What do you find? Somebody starts, and they pray through about seven or eight things in the prayer. It is a shopping list. Then somebody else prays, and they pray another seven or eight things—different things—and they sit down. No wonder it becomes so boring.
Where are we going? Where is the Lord in all this? Then someone goes on a travelogue. They begin here in Richmond, Virginia. They go to Japan. From Japan, they go to China. From China, they go to Russia. From Russia, they go to Germany, and then back to the States, the West Coast.
This is not prayer warfare.
Much easier it would be to bring everybody together, give them all the matters for prayer, and say, “Now all go home, get on your knees by your bed, and pray.” Because what we do is pray exactly as we would in private in our own homes, by ourselves in our prayer time, without any regard to the other brothers and sisters, without any regard to the anointing.
Then the prayer meeting becomes the venue of frustrated creatures. You get these wonderful little messages given in prayer—marvellous paraphrases of one of poor Paul’s letters, or a whole portion of Isaiah. Crazy.
We do not need an enemy; left to ourselves, we are enough.
What a wonderful thing it is when people begin to learn how to be quiet, and after you have heard all the suggestions for prayer, all the matters that there are, you wait for the anointing until you are led.
Then sometimes we go from one thing to another, and it is the most amazing thing. I cannot explain it. It is so amazing.
Such a time of prayer is far more exciting than any other kind of meeting. When I used to be in Britain, we used to find our prayer times on Tuesday evenings far more exciting than the Bible study on Thursday.
Young people all came to the prayer time. When I used to say, “Do you not find it a bit hard?” they would say, “No, we see here the illustration of what we hear in the Bible study.”
Sometimes, when we prayed for something to do with the government, people would rush back to put on the television and see the news, to see whether it had yet been answered. Sometimes it really was amazing, some of the things that happened.
Such is prayer warfare.
Now, I am not saying that all our times of prayer should be warfare. I am talking about one aspect, but this aspect is vital because it is the one point that the apostle Paul takes up in guarding the building of the house of God.
It is vital in the fulfilment of the purpose of God concerning the calling out of the nations of a people for His name, in the producing of the Bride. It is the one thing that the apostle Paul says is essential if this is to be preserved, covered, guarded, and carried on to the fulfilment of the Lord’s mind.
There is a wonderful word in Matthew 18:19-20:
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.
I have heard many messages on the last verse: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst.” I have heard other messages on, “If two of you shall agree on anything that they shall ask.”
I have been in meetings where someone has said, “Is there anybody here who will agree?” Someone puts up a hand and says, “Praise the Lord.” “Anyone else?” Someone else puts up a hand. “Oh, there are three of us—and four, five, six. Now the Lord has to do it.”
The idea is that God is an enemy and that He does not want to answer; but if, miracle of miracles, there are two believers who agree, then we can twist His arm. He has to do it. We have got Him in a corner. He does not want to bless, He does not want to save, He does not want to heal, He does not want to build up the church—but if perchance two or more believers agree, then He says, “Oh dear, dear, dear, I have to do it. It is amazing, but two of these believers are one.”
That is not the Lord.
This is all part of our instruction and our training. We are agreed. It is not that we agree to agree. It is rather that, as we listen to someone praying, something in our heart kindles. We know that what they are praying is under the anointing of the Spirit. We feel absolutely one.
Sometimes you hear two or three things, and you almost say, “He has taken the words out of my mouth. He has stolen them.” So amazing is the Spirit of God.
When two, three, four, or five people are in agreement like this, it is the work of the Holy Spirit. Then we know that the Lord in the midst is the One who is giving rise to the unity. It is the Lord in the midst, by the Holy Spirit, making known His mind in prayer, so that together we can move like a body.
It is the body of the Lord Jesus functioning in union with its Head. That is prayer warfare.
I think it is enough, but I will give you two examples of prayer. One is corporate, and the other is personal.
I remember a time in Jerusalem in the Yom Kippur War, when everything seemed lost. There were fourteen of us praying in the bunker in the Garden Tomb, the place where we believe our Lord was crucified.
As we sought the Lord in supplication, we did not know how to pray. The news was so terrible. Much of it was not being made public, but because I knew Moshe Dayan, who was the Defence Minister, I knew some of the things that were not public. We shared it in that little prayer time.
We asked the Lord, “What are we to do? Everything could be lost.”
Then a wonderful brother—a fifth-generation military man, English, very English, with little whiskers here and eyebrows that went up here—he was a colonel. He broke into the time and said, “Brothers and sisters, please judge this. I keep on seeing a picture.”
He would not call it a vision. He said, “I see a picture. Three times I have seen this picture. I have seen the mountains of Moab, on the other side of the Dead Sea, and I have seen clouds rolling down on them, blotting them out. Three times I have seen it. I do not know if it means anything.”
Another brother, more excitable but a good brother, said, “We must pray that the Jordanian government be confused.” The whole question was whether the Jordanians would enter the war. If they did, Israel was lost.
So we got to prayer, and we prayed, “Lord, confuse them. Confuse them, Lord. Let clouds come down upon King Hussein and his cabinet so that they do not come into this war.”
They never did. After a while, we got the victory, and we turned to praise and worship.
Months later, I was in the family home in England. My mother was then alive, and I heard her calling me. She said, “Come down quickly. King Hussein is on the television, and he is being interviewed by Robin Day.”
So I came down quickly. Robin Day said, “Your Majesty, all your colleagues in Egypt and Syria blame you for their defeat. Why did you not join?”
I heard with my own ears King Hussein saying, “We were going to go in, but we suddenly became confused.”
He said, “Our confusion was whether we had adequate air cover.”
Now, we had seen those clouds coming down. And he said, “We decided we could not go in.” Is that not amazing? That is something about prayer warfare.
Now, I would always urge you to be very careful to personally, on your own, indulge in prayer warfare. This is really a corporate thing. You are dealing with real powers, not imaginary fairy-tale powers.
But here is another story. I was convalescing in the home of a titled lady. She was a wonderful lady. She really knew the Lord. She knew about our situation in Richmond, England—the original Richmond. I had to get that one in.
She knew there was a brother, a self-made businessman, who had wrecked everything. In some ways he was a good man. He was a born-again man and he knew the Lord. But in other ways, it was almost like demonic influence. He wrecked everything, destroyed everything, poisoned people, and sowed dissension.
This dear sister, Lady Ogle, said to me, “We will have lunch, and after lunch, would you join me in prayer? I want to pray about your situation. Will you join me?”
“Oh yes,” I said.
We sat at lunch at a table that was from that wall to here, just the two of us. Not me at one end and she at the other; we both sat together at the other end. We had lunch, it was taken away, and she said, “Let us pray.”
She said, “I am going to pray for the removal of Brother So-and-so.”
“Oh,” I said, “I cannot join you on that.”
“Why not?” she said. “He is wrecking everything.”
I said, “No, no, no. The Lord has told us we are to wash his feet. I can tell you, we have often asked the Lord if he could be removed. But the Lord told us, ‘No. You wash his feet.’ And we have been washing his feet ever since.”
“Well,” she said, “that is not what the Lord has told me.”
“Well,” I said, “you go ahead and pray. I will say amen, but I cannot pray that prayer.”
Well, she went to town. I have never forgotten it. She was a little lady, no higher than I would think about this. She stood up; she got so carried away. She stood up, and she and I felt as if that whole great room shook.
She dragged out that spirit in the name of the Lord. She pronounced over him a sentence and said, “This man has to go. Either he changes or he goes.”
No doubt about the anointing. No doubt about the power. I could only say, “Amen. Amen.”
He died.
When he came to die, his own family would not sit with him, because out of his mouth came oath and filth. And the very brothers that he had so hated, misused, abused, and misrepresented were the ones who sat with him and saw him into the kingdom.
You see, sometimes we lose our physical life that our spirit may be saved in the day of Jesus Christ.
Those are two examples in warfare. We could have just given in completely, but we sought the Lord, and the Lord had His own way.
Brother Sparks used to say, “The Lord will leave a trial with you until He has done the work through it, whether it is a situation or a person. And when He has done the work, He will remove either the person or the situation.”
May the Lord teach us and help us to war the warfare, to fight the good fight of faith, to lay hold on life to which we are called. Thank you. Shall we pray?
Beloved Lord, write these lessons on our hearts, from the youngest to the eldest. For some, it may not mean much to begin with, but Lord, You are able in some very real way to train and to instruct us, to bring us to the place where, Lord, we are prepared to be good soldiers of the Lord Jesus.
We commit this time to You, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.