So that faith has just expressed things.
This first morning is devoted to the ministry of prayer and intercession. I am sure that the words quoted from Scripture—the request of the disciples, “Lord, teach us to pray”—are a request which very often comes from our own hearts, and one which has certainly been impressed upon me this morning.
How much of the prayer which is offered in these days is superficial and self-centred. Again and again, we need to go back to the Lord with that simple request which came from one of the disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray.”
I want this morning to go back to two very familiar Scriptures. One of them contains probably the first words of the Bible that most of us ever learned.
I was brought up in a rather traditional, so-called Christian background, and the words contained in Matthew 6, from Verse 9 onward, were probably the first words of the Bible that I ever learned by heart. When I first learned them, I probably was not conscious that they were from the Bible at all. I hardly knew what the Bible was, or what the New Testament was.
But I learned these words—words which, in the parish churches in our country, are said over and over again on Lord’s Day morning, repeated again and again in homes, schools, and colleges throughout our country. Yet they are so very imperfectly understood.
And yet these words contain some of the great reasons why we should pray. They are words which the Lord repeated in order that He might give to us, His people, something of the great principles which lie behind all prayer and all intercession.
Matthew 6:9-13:
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.
Along with these verses, I wish to read a further passage from Acts 4, from Verse 23 to Verse 31. We have here an account of one of the prayer meetings of the early church—probably the third prayer meeting of which we are informed in Scripture.
Peter and John had been arrested, questioned, and released. Being let go, they went to their own company and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said unto them.
Acts 4:24-31:
O Lord, thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is:
Who by the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David thy servant, didst say,
Why did the Gentiles rage,
And the peoples imagine vain things?
The kings of the earth set themselves in array,
And the rulers were gathered together,
Against the Lord, and against his Anointed:
For of a truth in this city against thy holy Servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together,
To do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel foreordained to come to pass.
And now, Lord, look upon their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness,
While thou stretchest forth thy hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of thy holy Servant Jesus.
And when they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
The words of our Lord in Matthew 6, as I have said, are words which are again and again repeated by those who meet in the name of the Lord. Yet, as I am sure all of us are aware, our Lord did not initially give these words that they might be repeated again and again as a particular set prayer.
They were given by the Lord in order that we might understand the divine principles whereby we may come into His presence and engage in the great ministry of intercession.
There is a prayer, of course, which can be prayed by all men, by the person who is far away from the presence of God. That prayer is the prayer of the publican: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
Yet when we enter the realm of intercession—a realm of prayer which particularly touches those who are of the household of God—we enter a much deeper realm. First of all, it brings to us a challenge: a challenge which affects our own spiritual life, our own walk with God, our relationship with other men and women, our brothers and sisters in Christ, and the world at large.
It is the challenge of Christian character. It is the challenge of spiritual warfare. Without facing up to that challenge in our own relationship with God in Christ, prayer as our Lord desires that we should engage in it—the ministry of intercession—becomes something which is totally impossible.
As we look together at these words in Matthew 6, the words of the Lord’s Prayer, we are brought again face to face with something of that great responsibility.
I have already said that so much of the prayer which we hear in these days is self-centred. I think that is particularly so with the Lord’s people—those who have come to some knowledge of redemption as it is found in Christ.
As God’s people gather together, prayers are so often essentially self-centred and self-interested. Perhaps it is true to say that in the prayers recited by those who know nothing of life in Christ, we sometimes hear words which tend more toward the glory of God and the exaltation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Yet when we come to the expression of prayer given by the Lord’s people, so often there is a self-centred concern with our own little requirements: our physical needs, our troubles, our difficulties, our material wants, and our material needs.
Not that God is disinterested in these things. God is interested in all of them. Yet surely these should not be the things which occupy the thinking and concern of God’s people.
In this very chapter, Matthew 6, we read later:
But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
There is our aim. That is our first concern. All these other things shall be added unto us. They are not our first concern.
If we see anything in Matthew 6:9-13, the first thing which strikes us is this: the Lord Jesus Christ teaches us to be concerned personally with Him—with His glory, His will, His purpose, and His kingdom.
Not until we are concerned with these things does He mention the request which has to do with our daily wants and wishes: “Give us this day our daily bread.” That comes long after the other major and primary concerns of the spiritual life and of our ministry of intercession.
Our hearts and minds must first of all be centred not upon our own interests, wants, or needs, but upon Him—upon His influence, His kingdom, His will, His righteousness, His glory, and His honour.
To say that, of course, is to say something which should be true of all spiritual living. Going back to the prophet Isaiah:
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned every one to his own way.
Man is born into this world separate from God and going his own way. The essence of sin lies in man’s self-sufficiency, his concern and desire for the things which minister to himself only.
Sin is essentially self-will. We have strayed from God, and man continues to stray from God because, within himself, he is self-sufficient. He feels that his life can be lived independently of the will of God and independently of the power of God. Self is essentially the basis of sin.
If we are saved from sin, as we claim to be, through faith in Christ, and have entered the glorious realm of redemption—the kingdom of God—it essentially follows that we are saved from a primary concern with the things of self.
No longer are we taken up and occupied with our own needs, requirements, and comfort. We are brought into a realm of living where our desires are completely beyond the things of self, centred not in what we need or want, but in the interests of Someone beyond us—centred, in other words, in the interests of God.
Our whole interest is beyond ourselves. I no longer recognise myself as the centre of this little world in which I live. My centre, my goal, is God—His will and His heart.
Therefore, there is essentially something unreal in a prayer life which is totally occupied with my needs: “God, give me my daily requirements. God, take me out of this little trouble, that little trouble, and the other little trouble.”
I am not saying that God is disinterested in these things. Yet if we are to engage effectively in this ministry of intercession, our whole concern must be so far beyond them.
As we look into the lives of the apostles, and particularly into the life of the Apostle Paul, we find something of that great concern which, first and foremost, was occupied with the mind of God and His people, and was so disinterested in his own circumstances.
Think of Paul’s prison epistles. Think of the letters which he wrote to God’s people while he himself was languishing in jail. He did not know whether he would ever be released to visit the people of God again, or whether he would ever again engage in public ministry.
Yet in these letters we find so little concern with the fact that he was imprisoned. He speaks from time to time of his bonds and of the fact that he is the prisoner of the Lord, but there is no concentration of thought upon his own difficulty.
His concern was beyond his immediate circumstances. His concern was upon the Lord, upon the Lord’s people, and above all upon the will of God in His people. That was the concentration of his thought: entering into a deeper understanding and a deeper expression of that will and purpose.
The supreme example of this in Paul’s epistles is his letter to the Philippians. There he was languishing in jail, in a position of great uncertainty, hoping, as he expresses in the first chapter, that he might one day be free to visit the Philippians and have fellowship with them again over the things of the Lord.
Yet at the same time, he did not know what the future held. He recognised that it would be far better to be with Christ, if that were the will of the Lord—to be brought immediately into His presence.
He knew the uncertainty of his position, and surely uncertainty is one of the most difficult things to bear. If Paul had known that tomorrow he would see the Lord face to face, he could have prepared himself for that. If he had known that within another week or two he would be back ministering among the people of God, he could have looked forward to that.
But there he was, in a position of dreadful uncertainty. Yet that did not particularly concern him. He was concerned with the Lord’s glory in Philippi and elsewhere, and he was concerned with entering into a deeper understanding of the things that are in Christ.
He was pressing on toward the prize, toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Though he had learned so much of the life of God, yet he had not attained:
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
He lived not an introspective Christian life, looking within, but a life looking out, looking beyond, looking unto the Lord—concerned with His glory, His honour, and the outworking of His purposes in His people.
That was Paul’s concern, and that must be our concern too.
It is to that concern that the Lord points in the first words of this prayer: “Our Father.”
Intercession is totally impossible apart from a vital relationship with Christ—the relationship of children to their Father. Apart from that, we cannot pray. We can say words, but words which of themselves are meaningless, and words to which God is in no way obliged to listen.
Yes, the publican said, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” I am sure God heard that prayer, and when we prayed that prayer, God heard us. Yet it was all of God’s grace.
When we enter into a relationship with God through Christ, we enter into a new realm—a realm in which God has bound Himself to us through His covenant grace.
You may have a little boy in your home. He runs off to a house in a neighbouring street, to people whom he has perhaps never seen before, though he may have some friendship with their children. He says to them, “Give me something to eat. Feed me. I am hungry.”
Those strangers are under no obligation to feed your child. They may give him something out of their own love and grace, but they are under no obligation to take care of his needs. You are under obligation to look after him, because he belongs to you.
In a sense, it is the same with God. Often God hears those who come to Him with some request that they have no right to ask. How often God hears the prayer of some godless person who has no interest in His ways, who comes to Him because he does not know any other way out of his difficulty.
Often God, in His sovereign mercy and grace, stoops down and lifts up such a person. He hears and answers prayer, though He is under no obligation to do so.
Yet when we enter into a relationship with God, we are on a totally different basis. God is, in a special sense, concerned with us. Christ loved the church and gave Himself specifically for the church.
God has a certain purpose to be worked out through His people, who compose His body and make up His church. It is a purpose which will be worked out in no other way and through no other people. In that sense, God particularly desires to listen to us and hear our requests.
We stand before Him in sonship, in that relationship of children to their Father. It is in that sense of relationship that we must pray if we are to engage effectively in the ministry of intercession.
As children, we must be obedient to the Father whom we recognise. Intercession brings to us the obligation to obey, to recognise the will and purpose of God, and to recognise the sovereignty of God in Jesus Christ.
Intercession brings to us the obligation to understand the will of God. If we are to unite together during the days of this week and ask for the fulfilment of God’s will and purpose within ourselves or within others, we must be very concerned that we ourselves are living lives under the authority of Jesus Christ.
The ministry of prayer and intercession brings an obligation upon us to obey God practically—not only to come with the words “Our Father” upon our lips, but to recognise Him as such, to recognise His position of supremacy and sovereignty: “Our Father who art in heaven.”
We must be ready to follow His will, even though at times we do not understand or recognise the way in which He is leading us.
I have said a number of times that so much of our praying these days is superficial and concerned about immediate things. We are in trouble and want God to deliver us. We have sickness or illness, and we want the Lord to take it away.
God is interested in these things. Yet there is so much that God may desire to teach us through our trials and tribulations. Scripture speaks much of what we learn through the difficulties which we encounter, and of the place which suffering and trial have in the will and purpose of God.
These things lead us further on in the knowledge of Him. They lead us into a deeper understanding of His way. I do not necessarily believe that it is always in the purpose of God that we should be badgering Him to take us out of our difficulties, remove our trials, or take our sicknesses from us.
God does these things often, and He does them for us. Yet very often we must recognise that there is a time when, in the providence of God, He allows upon our lives so much more than we understand.
He allows difficulties which are still incomprehensible. We cannot possibly understand why God has taken us in a particular way. Yet after we have passed through that particular trial, often without understanding, we look back and see the reason for it all.
There flows into our lives and experience a richness and grace which before we never could have known—apart from that period of time, apart from that difficulty, perhaps apart from that illness which God allowed or brought into our lives.
God is sovereign because He sees the experiences which we need to lead us on into that knowledge of Himself which will bring us into the place of usefulness He desires. He makes us fit channels for His work, vessels meet for the Master’s use, fit to be used by Him.
As we approach the ministry of intercession, we need again and again to be rightly related to God in Christ, recognising His sovereignty even when we are in the midst of circumstances which we do not understand.
When everything is going well, it is very easy to recognise the sovereignty of God. But in the midst of difficulty, sometimes it is a different question.
Yet the Lord asks us to recognise His presence with us in the midst of our trials, to recognise that He is above all, and that nothing occurs in the lives of His people apart from His knowledge and His sovereign love and grace.
Every experience through which He allows us to pass is in His hand and serves His purpose.
Peter speaks of this in the outline of Christian character which he gives in 2 Peter 1. The word used there is a word in the original language for which we have no exact counterpart in English. “Patience” is a weak translation of the word.
It speaks of a continuing in the things of God, of looking forward with a sense of purpose in the midst of our trials, seeing the purpose of God beyond them: a continual, purposeful endurance in the midst of difficulty.
That is something of what is contained in this word which we translate “patience.” It is a recognition of the sovereignty of God which does not bow down abjectly beneath difficulties or trials, but recognises that, however little we may understand why God is taking us through certain circumstances, the circumstance He allows us to pass through is purposeful in His hands.
“I do not understand how God is going to work out His purpose. I completely fail to see why God has brought me this way. But there is a purpose in this. God has something for me to learn. God has something to say to me here.”
Therefore, I do not allow this trial simply to be a parenthesis in my spiritual experience. My only prayer is not, “Oh God, take me out of this trial.”
Rather, in it I recognise the sovereignty of God. “Thou hast brought me into these circumstances for a specific purpose. What is Thy purpose? I want to learn. I want to know.”
There are many of us here who, no doubt, are passing through various trials and difficulties. We all have them. My difficulty may not be yours, and your difficulty may not be mine, but there are areas of trial which, no doubt, we are all experiencing.
Some of us have probably come to this conference trusting that God will give us some word of comfort in these trials, or perhaps show us a way out of them.
Perhaps, when we gather together in these morning hours, our temptation will be to ask that God should somehow deliver us from the circumstances into which He has brought us. But perhaps what God is trying to teach us in these days is that we should look for His purpose within these circumstances.
We should recognise His sovereignty, that through them we may be brought into a fuller understanding of His fullness. Whatever trials and difficulties He allows upon our lives, they are all purposeful. Every single one of them is purposeful.
No trial and no trouble is ever meant by God to be a mere parenthesis in our spiritual experience, but a means of bringing us into a new place of spiritual enlightenment and a new understanding of the depth of our relationship with Himself.
How often the very opposite is the case. God brings us into difficulty, and we say, “Oh Lord, take me out.” God, in His grace, does take us out, and then we forget the trial.
We forget those few days of fire, those years of difficulty, years which we did not understand. God had a rich purpose in them, but we missed it because, in those difficulties, we failed to recognise His sovereignty and His authority.
How important it is that we should recognise the sovereignty of God in seeking Him to fulfil His purpose within us and in interceding for others.
Not that we should be unconcerned about others’ difficulties and trials. But more than that, we should be concerned about the purpose and sovereignty of God. We should be concerned that God should teach us what He wants to teach us, by whatever means He desires to employ.
Within the company of God’s people as a whole—those for whom He has given us the burden of intercession—we should be concerned likewise for them: that He should bring them into an understanding of something of His fuller purpose and His fuller aim, by whatever means He desires to employ.
In all things, we should recognise His sovereignty and the sovereign character of His dealings with us.
Truly, it is beyond everything else that God is concerned with when He gives us this pattern for our praying: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”
“Hallowed be Thy name.” God is holy. It is the revelation of God’s character within us—that Christ might be revealed within us.
I believe that one of the things most necessary among the people of God today is an emphasis upon spiritual character. There is much else, of course, that we need, but how much we need in these days spiritual character.
Having come back after an absence of seven years, I have been deeply impressed in Great Britain, my own country, by the lowering of standards. Standards have gone down. I am not speaking simply of the world at large, though that is graciously true there.
I am speaking of the midst of God’s people—those who not merely nominally profess Christ, but those who profess to know and love the Lord, and give evidence that they have experienced the grace of God and are related to Christ.
It seems to me that standards have again and again gone down and down. There is such a lack of concern for spiritual principle and for the outworking of Christian truth in our daily lives—in ordinary daily living, in business life, in home life, and in the midst of God’s people.
God speaks of the ordinary, practical manifestation of Christian life: the righteous character of God, the righteous character of our Lord Jesus Christ, manifested in us. It seems to me that we are not sufficiently concerned about this.
We can be so concerned with an understanding of spiritual truth that we lose sight of the necessity of seeing that truth, by the grace of God, translated into our daily living—that we be not simply hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word also.
I am not saying anything profound. It is something we all know. Yet we need to know it in a much greater measure, because God’s people need to know it in their daily living in these days.
We can be concerned with defending the faith, and there are many people in the evangelical Christian world who are concerned with the defence of the faith. That concern is certainly not misplaced. There is a need for it.
But we need also to be concerned with living out the faith which the Lord has committed to us.
That is, I believe, a condition of effective intercession: “Hallowed be Thy name.” God’s name should be hallowed. He should be glorified. Something of the standard and righteousness of a holy God should be manifested in our own daily living.
We, as God’s people, in the ordinary daily round, should stand out as those who are distinct in this world.
How easy it is to be like everyone else. Not necessarily to do everything that is done in this dark and godless world, yet while on the one hand owning allegiance to our Lord Jesus Christ, at the same time to look as much like others as possible.
How easy it is to be more concerned about not being too different from others than we are about revealing the righteousness of Christ and representing His standard in our lives.
We need to be concerned about that practical manifestation of life—the manifestation of something of the character of God. We are a different people, a peculiar people.
The Word of God says much about the distinction which characterises His people. Surely this is supremely exemplified in our Lord. He was not a hermit. He did not live the life of a recluse.
People complained about Him. The Pharisees and others who sought to find fault with Him called Him a friend of publicans and sinners.
Yet at the same time, He could never be confused with these people. He was in the world, but He could not be confused with the world. The writer to the Hebrews says that He was “separate from sinners,” and in a very real sense He was.
There was that character—the character of God—within Him, which always stood out as something distinct. Christ was always distinct in the midst of the world.
He went to the cross to sanctify a people, to make a people like unto Himself. One of the characteristics of God’s people in these days—of us as individuals in the midst of a godless world, and of the church as those who gather together as God’s people—should be distinctiveness.
I am not suggesting that we should be divorced from the world, for we are here to minister to others and to be channels through whom God may work. Yet we should be distinct, just as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was distinct in this world.
Separate from sinners, yet in their midst, we as God’s people are to reveal the character of the Lord and the holiness of His name—in our homes, in our businesses, and in our relationships with one another in the fellowship of God’s people.
If we are not concerned about that, there is little point in our interceding for the purpose of God. The whole purpose of God has to do with the revelation of His holiness in a world which is so unholy.
If we are not vitally concerned about the revelation of the holy character of God within us in the mundane tasks of daily living, there is little point in our interceding and little point in our praying.
“Hallowed be Thy name. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things shall be added unto you.”
I would live for the concern not of my own will, but for the will of God. The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.
The Apostle Paul lived simply through the will of God, for the desire of His rulership and His kingdom.
This is the essence of the spiritual life, the essence of our Christian life. We enter into that realm of God-dominated life at the moment when we first come to an experience of faith in Him.
Faith is essentially the deliverance of the will of man to the will of God: the cry to Him, “Lord”; the recognition of His supremacy; the deliverance of our desire and will to the coming of His kingdom.
The life we live is to be constantly in that spirit. That is faith: the deliverance of our will to the will of God; the living of a life which constantly desires, not the fulfilment of our own desires, but the coming of His kingdom, His supremacy, His rulership, and His purpose.
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”—in the place of Your great supremacy, where everything is done as You desire it to be done.
May that be so in my life and in the sphere of our fellowship.
There is not much of the will of God being done here upon earth, in the sense that the will of man is so often opposed to it, though the Lord in His supremacy overrules the will of man.
But as in heaven there is absolutely no opposition to Your will, may that be the spirit in which I live. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” May that be upon my heart.
“Thy will be done on earth” is difficult. Then comes, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Here we are a long way from the beginning. Yet so often, in our lives, we put first things first and are primarily concerned with these things: “Lord, I need this. Lord, give me that.” That is childish.
God expects us to grow up in our knowledge of Him and in our understanding of His purpose. If we get to know God at all, we know that He is concerned about these things.
Indeed, we do not really need to ask Him for food. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
All your material circumstances and material needs will be provided by Him in such a way that He will work out His purpose within you. You do not need to be occupied with them at all. Let your concern be beyond yourself.
“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
Do we ever pray to God for consideration which we ourselves are not willing to give to others? We expect the grace of God in great measure, but are not willing to show grace to our brothers and sisters in the world.
We expect to be ministered unto by God, but we ourselves have not reached the place where, to any extent, we are ready to minister to the people of God and to the world around us.
Our lives are purposeful. God has placed us here with a purpose: the purpose of knowing Him and also the purpose of witness, manifesting His glory, His righteousness, and His character.
We must be concerned about that purpose. We must be concerned about exercising that purpose to the extent that we are ready and willing to accept our responsibility before God in this world, in whatever sphere He has placed us.
To that extent, we may ask God to discharge His responsibility toward us.
There is much more that we could say about these verses, but surely there is much within them which will help us in our ministry of prayer.
I want just to speak briefly concerning the early prayer meeting of the church, because I feel that in it there is an outworking of the principles which we have seen in Matthew 6.
We are not to take this as an account of everything that took place in that early prayer meeting. No doubt the meeting of the people of God went on much longer than it takes to read the few verses which we read together a little while ago.
There was much more said to God, and much more said to one another, than we have recorded here. Yet probably we have outlined for us, by the Holy Spirit of God in His grace, that which is most instructive.
The church was founded and established in suffering. The early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles give us an account of some of the sufferings which the people of God underwent during the first days, months, and years after Pentecost, after the establishing of the church here upon earth.
Peter and John had been arrested. They had been questioned. They had been released. Being let go, they went to their own company, gathered together with the other children of God, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them. Then they began to pray.
The substance of their prayer was so different from what would have been natural for so many people of God to pray in these days.
If we had been in the circumstances in which Peter and John found themselves, what would almost automatically have been the substance of our prayer? Some of God’s people would have come to the question, “Lord, why hast Thou allowed us to suffer like this? We have followed Thee. We have served Thee as far as we know how. We want to live for Thee, obey Thee, and witness for Thee. And now we are in trouble. Why?”
Or perhaps we would have said, “Lord, we have suffered. It is enough. Take this suffering away from us. Take us out of these difficulties.”
That is probably the most likely request that we would have brought to the Lord. Yet there is no suggestion of a request of that nature at all.
In fact, the implication is that the disciples were not at all surprised that they were suffering. The suggestion is that, had they not been allowed to undergo these difficulties, they would have been more surprised than they were by having to pass through them.
They quote the words of the Old Testament:
Why did the Gentiles rage,
And the peoples imagine vain things?
The kings of the earth set themselves in array,
And the rulers were gathered together,
Against the Lord, and against his Anointed.
Then they apply those words to the opposition against Christ:
For of a truth in this city against thy holy Servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together,
To do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel foreordained to come to pass.
Of course these things are going to happen. Of course there will be trial, trouble, and difficulty. God is working out His purposes through persecution.
All the forces of evil, the forces of hell, are arrayed against the purposes of God. Of course there will be opposition and suffering.
There is much said in the Word of God about the warfare in which we are engaged. Warfare means trouble. Warfare means trial and suffering.
If we ask that we should be taken out of the trial which the Lord allows us to pass through, I wonder whether we are asking at the same time to be delivered from our part in the spiritual battle—the spiritual warfare which is an intrinsic part of all spiritual life, an integral part of our life in Christ.
The people of God here did not ask for that. They accepted it. In it all, as we have seen in Matthew 6, they recognised the sovereignty of God:
To do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel foreordained to come to pass.
These sufferings and trials through which they had passed were all purposeful in the hands of God. God had a purpose in them all. He was ruling. He was with them in all.
There was recognition of the sovereignty of God, and one request—one request.
It was not a request for release from trial. It was a request that with boldness they might speak His Word.
A request that in the midst of trials they should be faithful. Whether there be a calm or a storm, whether the waves roll around, “Lord, grant that we may be faithful. Grant that we may know Thy Father’s will.”
In whatever way Thou dost lead us, grant that we may always recognise Thy sovereign will in the midst of our difficulties. Grant that we may be faithful.
Of course, the Lord answered that prayer. He gave faithfulness and boldness, that they might be those who manifested something of Him.
These, as I see them, are some of the principles of prayer—principles of the ministry of intercession.
Beyond everything else, as we gather together in the mornings of this week, let our concern be beyond ourselves, beyond our own immediate material and physical needs.
Let our hearts and minds go out to the Lord, concerned with Him, with His glory in us, and with His glory in His people.
Let us recognise His sovereignty in our lives and circumstances. Let us constantly heed the responsibility which is ours as we engage in this ministry of intercession: to know God, live for Him, walk in His way, and reveal His holiness.
Let us be willing not only to know what He wants and understand what He wants, but also, by His grace and power, to do what He wants.
When we come before Him in that attitude, we are ready to pray. We are ready to intercede effectively, and in such a way that the Lord will answer.
When we are concerned with His glory, the Lord will reveal His glory. Out of His grace and fullness, as we seek first His kingdom, He will add all the other little things which we need.