I have been sharing with you on the matter of the prayer ministry, calling it different aspects of the prayer life. We have been touching on prayer and God’s work, prayer and praise, prayer and the Holy Spirit, and prayer and perseverance.
I feel that the Lord tonight would like me to share with you on the matter of prayer and the kingdom, and to give a testimony of what the Lord has been doing in answer to this prayer ministry and intercessory ministry in which I have had the privilege of being involved in Denmark and Sweden.
I am really happy that the Lord has allowed me to share some of these things tonight. They will be part of the message in understanding the meaning of prayer and the kingdom.
We will open by reading two Scriptures: Matthew 18:18-20, and then Matthew 12:22-29.
Truly I say to you, whatsoever things ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatsoever things ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
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.
Then was brought unto Him one possessed with a demon, blind and dumb: and He healed him,
insomuch that the dumb man spake and saw.
And all the multitudes were amazed, and said, Can this be the Son of David?
But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out demons, but by Beelzebub the prince of the demons.
And knowing their thoughts He said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation;
and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.
And if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand?
And if I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges.
But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you.
Or how can one enter into the house of the strong man, and spoil his goods,
except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we are truly blessed in Your presence. Lord, we have come to bring You glory and honour Your name, You who are in our midst where we are gathered together in the name of Jesus.
Father, we ask that tonight You will glorify Your Son. Give Him all the glory. May there be no glory or honour to any man whatsoever. Lord, we know it is true, as it is written in the prophet, that whatever we have done, You did it for us.
Lord, we come to You tonight to honour, praise, worship, and glorify Your name. We ask, Lord, that we may be able to speak worthily about Your deeds, encourage one another, hear, and more than that, obey.
Lord, lead us to that very place where we begin to obey Your word and inherit everything that You have promised us as Your people, even today. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Amen.
There is that very famous preacher from the Welsh revival, Evan Roberts. He had a period in the latter part of his life when he did not preach. If I am not remembering wrongly, it was quite a long period.
People did not understand why this man had ceased to preach, so they asked him about it. They were interested to know what he did. He answered, “I am praying the prayer of the kingdom.”
We all know that he was involved with other people, and that this little group had seen that there is something even greater and more effective than preaching: to come into this prayer of the kingdom.
I would like to open by quoting something that Brother Nee wrote, I believe in The Prayer Ministry of the Church, which throws light upon this whole matter of the prayer of the kingdom:
By teaching us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” the Lord is indicating that there is a kingdom in heaven, but that it is not yet on earth. Therefore, we must pray that God will extend the borders of His heavenly kingdom to reach down upon the earth. We find here a greater emphasis on the geographical factor than on the historical.
“If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Is this a matter of history? No, this is a geographical problem. Wherever on the earth God’s Son casts out demons by the Spirit of God, there you have the kingdom of God in this present age.
The kingdom is more geographical than historical. If you get it, it is important.
Most Christians think that one day the kingdom of God will come upon earth. It is true that there is a historical side too. One day the kingdom of God will come and rest upon all the earth, and the Lord Jesus will be King of the earth. He will reign for ever and ever. Hallelujah!
Are you looking forward to that day, when the kingdom will come over the whole earth as the waters cover the bottom of the sea?
The kingdom of God is not only something in the future for which we can look. It is something that is beginning down here and bears upon our time, our circumstances, our nation, and our locality.
We cannot expect the kingdom to be extended in this age in totality, as a total kingdom. But we can expect it to be experienced in a partial way. Do you understand me?
This is what the Lord is speaking about in Matthew 12. Wherever demons are cast out by the Son of God, by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom has come upon us. That situation, that geographical area, where we experience victory over the spirits of darkness, is a liberated area.
In Denmark and Sweden, we speak of various areas where the church of God—the Lord’s people—has come into this position of authority and understanding of the prayer of the kingdom. By the grace of the Lord, and led by the Spirit of God, they have been able to paralyse enemy activity in a particular situation, or even in a particular area. We call that a liberated area. That is a good word.
The kingdom of God in this present age is a geographical problem, and we must be aware of it. How we need to see this!
Of course, this has to do with the building up of God’s people. Our brother Len has been sharing on that. There is a Scripture that has become very alive to me lately in this respect: 1 Peter 2:4-5, those well-known words about God’s spiritual house.
Coming unto Him, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious,
ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house,
to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Here we have the third step. We speak about living stones. We have all become living stones, thank God; we are not dead stones. Even if sometimes we feel that we are more dead than alive, and when we are together as a lot of people, we may feel that we are three or four hundred stones together, the fact is that we are living stones. We have been made alive.
Some Christians have stopped the process here. They are satisfied with being living stones. They think that all the Lord’s purpose is to get as many living stones as possible. It is good enough in a way, but it is not enough.
Those Christians are very much taken up with evangelism, because their zeal and purpose is to get as many living stones as possible before the Lord comes back. That is good, but it is not enough.
We go on: “As living stones, are built up a spiritual house.” This is something more—to be built together. God is not satisfied that, in Copenhagen, our church group should have one hundred and twenty-five living stones merely in a pile. That is not satisfying to the Lord; it is not His purpose.
He wants to build us together so that, together with all believers, we become a spiritual house.
Some people stop there. They get so excited about this purpose and vision of the church that they think there is nothing more. They have seen the church, and they say, “That is it.” But there is something more.
What does the Lord use the house for? It is not enough to have a house. The Lord is building the house for a reason: He wants to use it. The house itself is not the end. He wants to use that spiritual house for a holy priesthood.
To me, this has been a very strong calling into what a priesthood really is. What is a priesthood? What does the priesthood do?
As far as I can see, they are taken up with the ministry of intercession. If you look in the Old Testament, the high priest and all the other priests went between God and the people. They came in before God with all twelve tribes of Israel represented upon them in order to intercede.
I believe that one reason why the Lord wants His spiritual house built is that He is longing for that ministry of intercession between Himself and a lost world.
It is not enough that we have the vision of the church. We must function as the church. It is not enough that we are filled up as living stones. We must come into that priestly ministry.
The ultimate intention is that the Lord will have total dominion upon earth and that His kingdom may come. He will use the church for that purpose. It is essential for us to see this.
Building up God’s house and executing the holy priesthood are things that we must do along the way. Some may have the idea that first the church must be built and become perfect, everything put in order, and everything as the Lord wants it. Then, after we have come to that point, we can begin to deal with the enemy, exercise authority, and liberate areas.
But I think we go along with both: we build and we fight.
If you turn to Nehemiah 4:8-9:
And they conspired all of them together to come and fight against Jerusalem, and to cause confusion therein.
But we made our prayer unto our God,
and set a watch against them day and night, because of them.
Here is a situation where Nehemiah and the people are beginning to build the wall. As soon as they begin to build, the enemy is there. It is the same with us: as soon as we begin to be built up as a spiritual house, the enemy will be there to disturb it.
What do we do? We do what they did: “We made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night.” Watchmen on the wall, day and night.
We must not only be taken up with the building site. We must begin right away with the ministry of intercession and prayer if we are going to see the house built and function as a holy priesthood.
Then Nehemiah 4:16-17 says:
And it came to pass from that time forth, that half of my servants wrought in the work,
and half of them held the spears, the shields, and the bows, and the coats of mail;
and the rulers were behind all the house of Judah.
They all builded the wall and they that bare burdens laded themselves;
every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other held his weapon.
One hand building, and one hand holding a weapon. It is a building up that is also a battle. We are involved, and we do not have to wait. We cannot wait until the church of God is perfect. It will not be until it is all over anyway.
We need this priestly ministry right now. We need some of our people to see that they must begin to function in their calling as a holy priesthood, going into the ministry of prayer and intercession.
I believe Brother Nee once visited England and came to a group of brethren. He was very much impressed with all the knowledge they had. They were rich in knowledge. They knew everything and could expound any truth in the Word of God.
But he discovered a great lack among them. I believe that one day he stood up and said, “I have never been in a place where you have got so much knowledge and so little power.”
So powerless that you do not dare say “Boo!” to a demon.
I have found that to be true. We can have knowledge in abundance. We can understand everything about the purpose of the Lord, the spiritual house, how to build it up, and all the rest of it, yet be so powerless that we do not dare deal with a tiny little demon-being. It is true.
In many places, the Lord’s people are being depressed and oppressed. I have never experienced a time like this. Wherever I go, so many of the Lord’s people are under oppression. They feel that the enemy is coming upon them, and they are getting involved in many different kinds of bondage.
Do you really believe that because we see the vision of the church, we are automatically able to deal with all these cases? I do not believe it.
We need to consider the matter of the priestly ministry of intercession. In my church group, there is some vision and light concerning the church, the spiritual house, and even the eternal purpose. But that is not going to solve every problem we have.
We are battling with many of the Lord’s people who have been oppressed by the enemy.
We have a young sister who gave her life to the Lord some years ago. Somehow, she had a friend who led her to participate in a Tibetan monk mass. Young people go everywhere; there is such an activity of all kinds of religious exercises around Copenhagen.
During this performance, one of the monks came to her and struck her. In that same moment, something entered that girl.
From that moment, she could not leave her home. Everything became wrong. The Scripture that says we should not walk in darkness and stumble became such a bondage to her that we could not get her out of the house after darkness had literally come.
We have had to deal with that for several months in order to get through and see the Lord’s authority really beginning to work upon her. It is not an easy job. We do not claim to have faith in a benevolent ministry, but we do believe in corporate prayer, and we have seen many wonderful things happen.
We have a young brother who suddenly became so filled with fear that he had the same problem. We could not get him to attend the meetings because he was even frightened of getting on a bus. Before he left home, he drank a whole bottle of wine so that he was not aware of where he was. He came drunk to the meetings many times.
This is among the Lord’s people. What are we going to do about it?
The spiritual house must function. It must get into function so that the priestly ministry of intercession and prayer—the prayer of the kingdom—can begin to operate, and we can have these liberated areas.
Thank God, we have experience. I remember a housewife who had such a problem with the enemy. Every time she went to the meeting, she could not sing with the rest of the company. She could not pray. She could not do a thing, because something within her kept saying, “Jesus is not alive. He is dead. He is not alive today.”
She came for help. We tried to explain to her that the Lord Jesus is alive. We took all the Scriptures, personal testimonies, and everything, but it did not help her. We had all the knowledge, but we lacked the power.
So what did we do? We went to the prayer group and said, “You must pray. We must pray this thing through.”
The prayer group in Copenhagen began to pray and intercede. This sister was in another part of the country, and I had to go to see her and pray for her with some other brothers. We struggled and battled for nearly three months.
Finally, one evening, the Lord really liberated that area. Today this housewife is free. She is one of the sweetest and most wonderful sisters I have ever met.
Do you see there is a problem? We must get involved. It is not enough that we have knowledge. Oh, no. We must learn to pray the prayer of the kingdom.
These liberated areas are areas where the strong man has been bound. When the strong man has been bound, we can go in and plunder what he has held. Not until then.
Even when we speak about evangelism, I used to think this was only a matter of witnessing for Christ, preaching the gospel everywhere and anywhere and to anybody. As I have said before, I have been in every kind of evangelistic activity you can count.
But suddenly the Lord showed me there was a problem. Why do people not receive the gospel easily? Why do they not respond and get saved? Why do we have to preach so many sermons, have so many evangelistic meetings, hand out so many tracts, and have all these coffee bars, street missions, and everything else?
Because these people are bound.
If you go to 2 Corinthians 4:3-4:
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that perish:
in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving,
that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.
They cannot see. They have been blinded. They have been bound. It is the strong man that is behind it. It is the strong man in all our cities and localities that prevents people from turning to the Lord and being saved.
There is a real problem. Until we learn to battle in the field of evangelism, pray the prayer of the kingdom, and literally liberate areas so that people can be free to listen to the gospel and receive faith, we will not get the job done.
I went up to Stockholm, and they told me that the church had begun to evangelise in a quite extraordinary way. At the beginning of 1977, they were together and asked, “Should we ask the Lord how many souls we can claim for Him during this whole year?”
It came to several brothers and sisters in that assembly that they should ask the Lord for one hundred during that year. So they did.
Please understand, brothers and sisters, this does not mean that we pray, “Thank You, Lord, You will give us one hundred souls,” and then put down every evangelistic effort and have a nice time while, during the year, the hundred come one by one.
No, it is a real battle throughout the year—for these people to be liberated from the strong man, and for the strong man in their lives to be bound.
It was in January 1977. I went back in January 1978 to the same church, and one of the first questions I asked the pastor when I came through the door was, “So what happened? Did you get one hundred souls?”
He looked at me and said, “Yes, brother, we got one hundred and four, because the Lord added a little extra to fulfil His promise that He will give us more than we pray for.”
I thought, how marvellous! I had never had that thought before in my life—that we could evangelise in that way. But I do believe it.
If we see that we, as the Lord’s people, have authority, and that the Lord Jesus is King now on earth, then we are able not merely to ask for the liberation of the whole world in a vague way, but to ask the Lord what His will is concerning this or that situation. Then we will see something happening among us.
In the same church, we had a leadership conference. We expected four hundred people, but during the last week before the conference, an additional four hundred registered. There were eight hundred in a church that could not possibly take more than four hundred.
It was chaos as far as the practical side was concerned. It took twenty minutes to get into the restroom. The lines were so long. Eating was such a problem that they had to eat in four or five shifts. We nearly never got started with the meetings because people were continually having their dinner.
The brothers talked together and said, “What are we going to do? The enemy has a wonderful opportunity to confuse this whole conference through all these practical things.”
The brothers got together and prayed. One brother said, “We cannot possibly ask four hundred people to go home. They are here now. Why do we not claim this whole building as a liberated area where the enemy can have no influence whatsoever?”
All the brothers felt that this was really of the Lord. We stood together in that large room and claimed that the church building should be a liberated area.
It was really amazing how those eight hundred people managed, without any complaint or grumbling at all. There were smiles everywhere, even when people had to wait fifteen or twenty minutes and then still longer for their food. It was extraordinary. I had never experienced the Spirit so dominating the whole thing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus is King and has all authority, not only in heaven but on earth. I believe it is a reality today that the church of God, operating under the headship of the glorious Almighty One, can take authority to liberate areas—even buildings—when needed.
In that same church, something happened that was so fantastic I must tell you about it. When I went to that church in September 1976 for a week of prayer before the Swedish election, the pastor met me at the airport. When we arrived at his home, he said, “Before we take the coffee, there is one thing. I have just heard today that the Jehovah’s Witnesses have got permission to build a Scandinavian headquarters in our city.”
The suburb of Stockholm was called Järfälla. He was upset and disturbed, and said, “Please, before we take the coffee, could we kneel down and commit that into the hands of the Lord?”
We knelt together with another brother and began to pray. They cried to God, “Lord, smash it! Crush it! Lord, do something about it!”
In my honesty, I must admit I did not have very great faith at that time. But I joined in, perhaps with typical Danish politeness, and afterwards I forgot all about it.
When I came back a year later, that brother said to me, “Do you know what happened about the Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
I said, “What are you talking about?”
He reminded me of the prayer in the kitchen. Then he told me that the church continued praying for some weeks. In a prayer meeting, one brother stood up and said, “Would it not be good, as a whole, to ask the Lord where the strong man has his stronghold in our city?”
Another brother said, “I believe that the strong man has his stronghold in this new Jehovah’s Witnesses building and the work that is going to be accomplished there in the city.”
The whole body of believers agreed that this was true, and they began to bind it. In Scandinavia, we have some, I think, rather unspiritual ways of handling things sometimes. We stand on our feet, and sometimes take one another by the hand to manifest unity as a body when we have prayed about something and feel that we are in agreement.
The whole church stood on its feet, prayed, and bound this thing.
Later, an office clerk working under the mayor looked through the applications concerning the Jehovah’s Witnesses building. He realised that the sixty persons who were going to work there would receive no salary. They were only to be paid a small amount each month to keep them going.
The clerk went to the mayor and said, “There is something here I think you ought to know, Mr. Mayor. Did we not reckon that we would have sixty more people employed in our city when this Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters was established? We have a high rate of unemployment, and we want people to come and work.”
The mayor answered, “Yes, we were looking forward to having sixty more people working here.”
The clerk replied, “I am afraid I have to disappoint you. These sixty are going to draw on social security. They will not be paid.”
The mayor became upset. He went to the city council, and they cancelled the whole project. They told the Jehovah’s Witnesses they could not have permission. The buildings had already been finished, but they could not obtain a working permit, so they could not operate.
Do you know what the Jehovah’s Witnesses did? They sold the buildings to the church.
Today those buildings are used for the church. Is that not marvellous? Hallelujah!
All our people say, “Hallelujah,” and the rest of them, “Amen.”
When I heard of it, I really danced for the first time in my life. It has been such a testimony throughout Scandinavia: the Jehovah’s Witnesses could not get in, and the buildings are being used—wonderful buildings—to preach the gospel and spread the life of the Lord.
If you could see it! If we believe and are ready really to act as the Lord’s people, we can see these areas liberated.
We had been praying about the Swedish election. The Socialists were two percent ahead of the Conservative Party in the polls. The Conservatives normally stood more for Christian morality.
The night before the election, we had a large prayer meeting in a city church in Stockholm. The former Prime Minister of Sweden was a very wicked person.
Swedish Christians had a problem concerning politics because many were party members. They did not dare to be specific. This is another problem: we do not dare to be specific in prayer. We pray these all-round prayers, so nobody can get hold of the prayer. We go around and around. It is a good all-round prayer.
Sometimes I feel that the Lord in heaven is sitting and looking down, saying, “What on earth are they trying to tell Me? What do they want Me to do?”
I have a naughty habit in my place. Sometimes, after worship and prayer, the leading brothers go down to greet the people. When I stand there, I ask someone, “Tell me, brother, what did you pray for tonight?”
He looks at me and says, “Well, yes, you see, I—I do not know.”
That is terrible. We must be specific. The Lord says, “Pray about anything you want,” but we must get specific.
That night I stood up and said to the leading brothers, “Would you permit me to be frank with this congregation?” They asked, “What are you going to do?”
I told them, “I am going to suggest that we pray that that man will come out of government, and we will name him by name tonight.”
The Pentecostal pastor said yes, because he was a man of courage.
I stood up and said, “We had better pray that this wicked man shall not come into power again.” Suddenly they all said, “Yes, yes, yes!” I was leaving the country the next day, you know, so being Danish did not bother me. But party members were a little afraid.
We prayed that this man should never get his foot into government. It was amazing. Although they were two percent ahead in the polls—and those polls are usually very accurate—the Conservatives won by two percent. That was a margin of four percent.
I reckon it as an answer to prayer.
This is how we ought to be with every enemy activity—within or without, inside or outside the church. We are not only called to build up the church. We are called to pray the prayer of the kingdom.
The Lord is not only ruling the church. He is not only the Head of the church; He is the Head of the universe. He is Head of the nations. He is Head of all things.
God gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body. All power of darkness is subject to our Head. Is that not fantastic? Hallelujah! He is King of the earth as well as King of heaven.
There was another thing going on in Sweden. In the Swedish law process, when laws are put before Parliament, some people made a suggestion for a law that would allow incest in families. You will not believe it, but it is so.
You can understand why we have to pray for our nations and why we can no longer, as the church of God, remain passive and be taken up only with our own affairs. It is terrible.
Imagine incest between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, and even between sisters and brothers, made an official proposal for law. When the Christians heard about it, I received a phone call because we worked together in this spiritual warfare, and we began to pray against it.
I went to Stockholm for a week. One day we had an open-air meeting outside the Parliament building in a large square. There were about seven or eight hundred Christians together. Two brothers went to the microphone and said, “We know that many Christians are writing petitions and sending protests to the government, but we need something stronger than that.”
They said that the authorities would receive the lists, thank the delegation, and then put the papers away. But we were standing in front of the building where men were going to decide on that law. They said, “We are here to bind this whole project.”
I was astonished because many people were around. I thought, “These men are a bit crazy. What are they doing?” But they had been praying for months, so it was not merely an idea that had suddenly arisen.
We stood there hand in hand in front of the Swedish Parliament. In the name of the Lord Jesus, we bound the enemy standing behind that terrible law that would break down homes.
After a few weeks, a Christian lawyer discovered what had been happening. He found that the people who made the proposal had tried to deceive the new Swedish Prime Minister, who was at least a nominal Christian. The Prime Minister did not know what it was about. A Prime Minister cannot examine everything; he must sign things and rely on people to look after them.
The lawyer wrote to him and explained what was really going on. As soon as the Prime Minister received that letter, he stopped the law. He wrote back to the church, saying that he hoped people would inform him of such things, because he realised he had been about to be misled.
He called it off, and that law never came through. Praise the Lord! There is power in the prayer ministry and intercession.
I could tell so many things, but I must tell you one more before we close. The last time I was here, I told you about what the Lord had been doing in Denmark. When I went home, I realised that this matter had been transferred to Sweden.
A Finnish film producer, who played tennis with the Swedish Prime Minister, suggested that they get support to make a certain film in Sweden. The Prime Minister consented, and they gave government money to produce the film.
This producer had his own island, so he could allow people to use it without anyone being able to prevent it. Nobody could enter private property and say, “You are not allowed to shoot the film here.” It was dangerous, and sadly the enemy came in that way.
I went to Stockholm again and then on to Finland, where I was in a conference in the northern part of the country.
On Saturday night at that conference, I was speaking to Finnish Christians about the whole matter. I pointed out how one of their own countrymen, the Finnish producer, was going to make this film on his island in southern Finland.
In the middle of the meeting, a retired Pentecostal pastor came in. When he heard me speaking, he came to me and said, “When you have finished, there is something I would like to say.”
He told us that, in Sweden, he was boarding a plane to attend the conference. When he entered the plane, the Lord said to him, “Go right forward to the front seat.”
In those old planes, some seats faced each other, and you could see the people opposite and speak with them. He said, “Lord, I do not know why I should go there. I never go there.” But he went.
He sat down and then saw a man sitting opposite him. Suddenly he realised that this man was the Finnish film producer, on his way back to Finland.
For one and a half hours, he did not speak a word to the man, but sat constantly binding the spirit behind that person.
The whole congregation that Saturday night was so moved by this testimony that they all began to pray and cry to the Lord.
Two months later, opposition to that man and his project became so strong that he finally gave up. The greatest thing of all was that I heard him say on Swedish radio, when he was asked why he could not continue with the project, “I cannot go on because the Christians do not want it.”
It was about time it was heard that there is something Christians do not want. Do you think so? Praise the Lord!
It is amazing what the Lord does when we learn to pray the prayer of the kingdom. What is it? Let me explain it very shortly.
We are ambassadors. We live here on earth, but it is not our real home and not our real nation. We belong to a heavenly nation, to a glorious kingdom. We are found in all these different nations where we live, but we are ambassadors.
What does an ambassador need in order to act? He has nothing in himself. There is no person on earth, perhaps, so insignificant as a diplomat. He is merely an official representative; he has no power in himself. He can act only when he has the consent of his government.
If the Danish ambassador in Washington wanted to declare war on the United States, he could not simply go to President Carter and say, “We want to fight you. We want to start a war.” He could not do that. He would need to confer with his government.
The principle in the prayer of the kingdom is what we learn in Matthew 18:18: we can never loose anything that has not been loosed in heaven, and we can never bind anything that has not been bound in heaven.
We have to ask our Government. We have to confer with our Government. We are nothing in ourselves. We are merely diplomats with no power. In order to deal with anything, we must ask our Government.
When we have all these problems and enemy activities—in individual lives, in our nation, or in the church—we must ask our Government, “What do You think about it? What will You do about it?”
When we get the answer, when the Lord speaks to us—and He does speak when we ask Him—then we have authority behind us. We can act accordingly, and nobody will be able to hinder us. Nobody can come against the Lord Himself.
When the Lord has said something, it is going to happen. It will happen. It has never failed, and it will never fail. He has the authority to do whatever He says.
So that is the first thing. If a lot of people could come together and ask the Lord concerning all these situations, “What are You thinking, Lord? Are You happy about this? Are You happy about that law that will break down thousands of homes? Are You happy about Jehovah’s Witnesses coming into our area?”
He is the Head of the universe. He is King of the earth. He is the Owner of the earth. It is His inheritance. It is about time we simply understood, believed, and acted accordingly.
When we have asked and received the answer, there is another principle: we must be in agreement.
The Lord has promised us anything we ask if we are in agreement with one another. This has nothing to do with one mind merely agreeing with another mind. We can all agree on various things.
It is agreement in the sense of being melded together as one. This is why it is essential that the spiritual house is built up and that we love one another. Anything in our companies that is displeasing to the Lord must be cleansed and purified, so that we can have true unity with one another.
The real word is being of one accord, being in harmony in everything. These are the two principles by which we are able to pray the prayer of the kingdom.
May the Lord help us. It is tremendous how effective the Lord will be able to work through us if we come into that prayer of the kingdom.
Oh, brothers and sisters, I pray that you get the vision. I pray that it will burn into your hearts that our King is supreme and that He has all power, not only in heaven, but in reality—in 1978, in the United States as well as in Europe. It works.
May God make us a spiritual house in order that we may truly come into that priestly ministry of prayer and intercession.
Lord, we are so thankful that we are not dealing with theory, not even merely with theological matters. No, we are dealing with realities, matters of life.
Lord, I pray tonight that You will somehow impress this perspective into our hearts. Help us to see how the enemy is operating today, how he is trying to bind the future and certainly our nation and the people around us; how he is trying to take the lead over this place that belongs to You.
Lord, You are the God of all nations, and we proclaim You to be that. Raise up Your people today, Lord. May Your people come upon their feet and stand before Your face in that priestly ministry.
Oh, God, give us faith. Give us vision. Give us determination. Get us out of all passivity. Lord, get us beyond our own limitations, whether they be individual limitations, our little small circles, or our little small church groups.
God, give us the position You have given us. This is a matter of taking dominion over the whole universe.
Father, we pray that You will do this, and we will not forget to thank You and praise You tonight. You have shown us such deep answers to prayer that they go beyond all imagination.
Your word is true: You are able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. Lord, be glorified. We want to glorify You tonight. We want to honour You. We want to lift You up.
You alone are worthy. Praise be Your name. Hallelujah. Amen.