Turn with me to the book of Acts, chapter 2.
Tonight I am only going to read one verse: Acts 2:42.
And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Then turn to Acts 4:23.
And being let go, they came to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said unto them.
And they, when they heard it, lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, 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.
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul: and not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
And with great power gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.
Then, if you will turn to Colossians 4, from verse 2:
Continue stedfastly in prayer, watching therein with thanksgiving;
Withal praying for us also, that God may open unto us a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds;
That I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak.
And Ephesians 6, from verse 17:
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
With all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints,
And on my behalf, that utterance may be given unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,
For which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
Finally, 1 Peter 4:7:
But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto prayer.
As I said yesterday, there is an anointing made available to us all. We do not want this time to be in any way vain or futile. So I am going to stand by faith under that anointing for my speaking, and I suggest that you stand by faith under that anointing for your hearing, if you want this time to mean something to you.
Let us pray together.
Lord, I want to recognize—we all want to recognize—that apart from You we can do nothing. I can speak, and it amounts to nothing. We can hear, and it amounts to nothing. But, Lord, You have provided us with an anointing this evening, both for the speaking, for the translating, and for the hearing.
And we want, Lord, by faith, to come under that anointing which is upon our Head, the Lord Jesus, and which the Holy Spirit makes a living reality to every one of us. We take that anointing by faith for our speaking, for the translating, and for the hearing, Lord, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now, in my little contribution to these days that we have had together, I have been dwelling upon Acts 2:42:
And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.
I have pointed out that there are four essential characteristics of church life, without which church life must, in some way or other, be devalued. You can have one of these, you can have two of these, you can have three of these; but if you and I are really going to experience real church life, we need all four of these characteristics.
We have dealt with the apostles’ teaching. I am not going to go into it this evening, except simply to say that it is the Word of God. The apostles’ teaching was the crown of all the revelation that God has given to us in the canon of Scripture, in the sixty-six books that make up our Bible.
It is interesting that they continued steadfastly in the Word of God—in the study of the Word of God, in meditation in the Word of God, in the digestion of the Word of God, in the Word of God becoming flesh and blood in them.
Then last night we dealt with the second characteristic: fellowship. We looked at the meaning of this word fellowship. This is a characteristic of church life—real fellowship. It is a sharing of the Lord Jesus in every single way. We are all different, but we share the one Christ.
Tonight, I am not going to take the breaking of bread. I am going to do that tomorrow. I am going to jump to the end and take prayer. I just feel I need to do that tonight.
So I am going to share with you this evening some of the thoughts the Lord has given me on the matter of prayer. It is very interesting to me that these characteristics in which they continued steadfastly begin with the Word of God and end with corporate prayer.
Now, I do not think I have to say that most of us find corporate prayer the most mundane, the most boring, and the most dreaded duty of the child of God. We will do anything but pray. We will go to a Bible study, we will have a long fellowship time, we will have an evangelistic drive or crusade; we will do anything but a prayer meeting.
We are normally very happy when we have an excuse for not going to the prayer meeting. Of course, we have to say that we hardly need the enemy because of what we have done to the prayer time ourselves. Whilst it is the enemy who has been at work, we ourselves, left to ourselves, have reduced the prayer meeting to the most mundane, boring, heavy, and dull gathering in the whole life of the church.
It is no wonder that we have to pull ourselves together to go to the prayer time. And yet corporate prayer is an essential characteristic of church life.
Not just petition, not just request, not just the sharing of needs—although all that comes into corporate prayer—but authoritative prayer, born in the hearts of God’s people by the Holy Spirit. Authoritative prayer is an absolute essential.
All that we have learned concerning the Word of God, all that we know in fellowship, and all that we know of the atoning work of the Lord Jesus on the cross in the breaking of bread, comes into practical, relevant exercise in corporate prayer.
Indeed, you can tell the temperature of any work of God, or any fellowship of God’s people, by the prayer meeting. If the prayer meeting is dull, the whole work in God’s eyes is dull. If the prayer meeting is heavy, the whole work is heavy. It is labouring under works of death in some way or another.
If the prayer meeting is all over the place—here a person preaching a sermon, here marvellous flowery oratory, here great eloquence, here a paraphrase of the Sermon on the Mount, here a little poem, then somebody’s broken knee, somebody else’s terminal disease, another little bit of preaching, and then a world tour all round the world—this is indicative of what is wrong with that fellowship.
If we are all over the place, if we cannot discern the mind of God corporately, if we do not know how to be harmonized together, if we do not know how to act as a spiritual military unit under our Commander-in-Chief, if we do not know how to war the warfare of the Spirit, it is an indication that there is something diseased and something wrong in that whole work or fellowship.
It is a symptom that, whilst people may talk about church life, glory in church life, and study church life, they are not experiencing church life. Everyone is still an individual, and they are all doing their own thing.
In fact, the concept of the prayer meeting is exactly that: it is the most democratic meeting in the life of the church. We all come to do our own thing in it. We have no idea of being under the government of God—or, if we are, the government is merely personal: “I have got a burden, and I am going to make sure that everybody else is burdened with it in the time of prayer.”
This is the normal prayer meeting.
How different was the one clear example we have of a corporate prayer meeting in the New Testament. First of all, they understood the situation. Secondly, they got before God and lifted up their voice with one accord.
Probably, in an Oriental way, they all prayed together for a while—a great noise while everybody prayed together. Then, as it quietened down, this one prayed, and that one prayed, and another prayed, in a great harmony.
We have here a kind of paraphrase of the prayer that finally touched the heart of the matter. Whoever prayed it and led everybody in prayer stood upon Psalm 2. God the Holy Spirit applied the truth of Psalm 2 to what was happening to that company of God’s people in Jerusalem.
They stood on it. They appealed to God on the basis of that God-given word, which was the Word of God applied to a local and given situation. It became, in the hands of the church there, the sword of the Spirit.
They took that word and stood on it together. They appealed to God that He would deliver them from fear and give them strength to preach the Lord Jesus, with signs and wonders following. And the whole place was shaken.
Now, I think it is very telling evidence of where we all are that most Christian believers are terribly excited about the fact that the place was shaken. “Oh,” they say, “I would love to be in a prayer meeting where the place was shaken. Think of it—everything wobbling, everything moving after we prayed. What wonderful power!”
My dear friend, the shaking of the place is, quite honestly, almost immaterial. God can shake a place with hardly moving a finger. He does not even have to look down on us from His throne to shake a place. All He has to do is say to an angel, “Shake it.” I mean, it is nothing to God.
Yet Christians get so excited about this kind of supernatural thing. “Oh, I would love to be in prayer meetings where the whole place was shaken.” My dear friends, that is not the miracle. That is just a symptom.
God was so thrilled with that prayer meeting that He almost shook it spontaneously. What was remarkable was that all those who believed were of one heart and one soul. That is the miracle.
If every prayer meeting were shaken, wherever it was held, what would it do except get us into some kind of idea that that is what we are? We would become the house-shakers—the new denomination. My dear friends, it is so ridiculous.
The great point is this: God answered their prayer. The apostles, with great power and authority, gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and multitudes were added to the church, if we go on reading the record.
And the most wonderful thing of all—that heart of God’s purpose, that burden in the Spirit of God for the people of God—was that they were of one heart and one soul. No one said that what they owned was theirs, but they held it in trust for the church. That was the result of corporate prayer.
My dear friends, suppose these dear believers had had marvellous Bible studies. Suppose the apostles had said, “Let us have a Bible study every day, and we will study fellowship. We will study the characteristics of fellowship, the aim of fellowship, the foundations of fellowship, the power of fellowship, the scope of fellowship, the results and consequences of fellowship.”
They would all have been so fellowship-conscious by the end of those days, and they would not necessarily have had much fellowship. The enemy would have worked and worked and worked to set this brother against that brother and this sister against that sister. Before long, all kinds of factions and divisions would have developed.
But, my dear friends, whether they had such a Bible study or not, they turned what they understood into authoritative prayer. By turning what they understood of the Word of God and the purpose of God into authoritative prayer, the whole place was shaken, because God said, “I am so delighted. They have got the right end of the stick.”
They understood that these tremendous truths have got to be prayed into being. They do not just happen. They have to be prayed into being somewhere. Some people have got to pay the price in spiritual travail for something to be born.
This is the explanation of why most of us are in fellowships that are playing at church instead of, in our spirit, really feeling that there is something born of God there—something corporate that has been given birth to by the Spirit of God. I cannot explain it; I can only grope after it. But I know what I mean in experience.
Nobody wants to pay the price. Everybody glories in the truth, but nobody wants to pay the price. We can talk until we are blue in the face about the cross and the crucified life, but the way the crucified life, in its final and ultimate analysis, is expressed is in lives laid down in prayer.
Because prayer is the most unromantic, the most unglamorous, and the most war-torn of all the services and ministries that we can offer to God.
What an amazing thing we find: God calls the church to pray. There is an idea amongst many believers that only the very special go to prayer meetings. You have got to be a kind of born mystic, too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use, and then we can shut you away in the prayer meeting.
The successful businessman never appears at a prayer meeting. The successful professional never comes to prayer; he is far too busy. He is a practical man anyway. The good housewife does not come; she is far too busy. The mother of children cannot come because of urgent and necessary duties. So we leave it to the mystic—the glazed-eyed stargazer.
We say, “Oh, how wonderful it must be to be like so-and-so, who can give themselves to prayer.” But what we are really thinking is that so-and-so is no good. They could not wash a floor, polish a piece of furniture, take care of a baby, or run a business—but, thank God, they can go to the prayer meeting.
Because we have this attitude to prayer, prayer is the Cinderella of everything. It is the most unimportant gathering in the life of the church, and everything else takes priority within our own lives and within our corporate life.
That is why we see so little real result from the truths we hold so dear.
It is very interesting to me that our Lord Jesus said, quoting from the prophet Isaiah:
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.
He could have said, “My house shall be called a house of worship for all nations.” He could have said, “My house shall be called a house of salvation for all nations.” He could have said, “My house shall be called a house of light, a house of truth, for all nations.”
But He said:
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations; but ye have made it a den of robbers.
That has a very modern ring to it when we see what has happened amongst the household of faith, even on the North American continent: a den of robbers instead of a house of prayer for all nations.
I think of the Ephesian letter, which by common acclaim is the high-tide mark of revelation in the New Testament. The apostle has spoken from before times eternal to the ages to come. He has spoken about the eternal purpose of God, which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He speaks about the amazing way in which you and I have been brought into Him, made fellow heirs and fellow partakers. Then he goes on to the whole question of the church growing up into Christ as the Head, that it might become a full-grown man.
He speaks of all the practical things to do with believer and believer, husbands and wives, wives and husbands, children and parents, parents and children, employers and employees, and employees and employers.
One would have thought that, with such a tremendous letter and such revelation, the apostle would finally have said, “Let us be very careful to have conferences for the deepening of spiritual life.” But he did not.
It would not have been wrong if he had said, “Finally, let us give care to our teaching, that we teach what is living and true.” He could have said, “Finally, let us go out and evangelize, making disciples of all those around us to the ends of the earth.” He could have said, “Let us be very careful to live godly and holy lives.” Of course, all these things are right.
But what he said was this—I am paraphrasing now—it was as if he said: “My dear friend, if you understand what I have said, and if you are a child of God and born of the Holy Spirit, you have been introduced into an enormous conflict.”
Whether you like it or not, you are in an enormous war. Ranged against you are not flesh and blood, but principalities, powers, world-rulers of this darkness, and hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenly places.
He tells us that we have to stand in Christ, and withstand, and, having done all, stand. He tells us that we have to take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and pray at every season in the Spirit for the saints and for those in the work of God.
What is the apostle trying to say to us? He is trying to say this: if you and I want to see God’s eternal purpose really touching lives down here, if we want to see something of church life, if we want to see in actuality what it is to be fitly framed together and growing into a holy temple in the Lord, built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit, then we are going to have to stand in Christ together.
We are going to have to stand against principalities and powers, world-rulers of darkness, and hosts of wicked spirits. This is not, as some people think, an individual thing. You will notice that the whole thing is in the plural. This is a church thing.
We are to stand together as the church of God, in the armour given to us, in Christ. Like that one illustration of a corporate prayer meeting, we are to know the Holy Spirit giving us the Word of God to stand upon and use as the sword of the Spirit.
We are to watch thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints and for those engaged in the work of God. My dear friend, do you not think this finds us out?
Did we really think that the apostle Paul was just saying, “Let us have one of those normal, boring little prayer meetings that seem, quite honestly, to move so little and go such a little way, if at all”?
This is the challenge to us.
It is a very interesting thing that, when the Lord Jesus spoke of His coming—and I personally do not have much doubt that we are in the last phase, not the very last phase, but in the last hour, if you like—He said, not once but again and again, “Watch and pray.”
We have only ourselves to blame if we find the flood of evil coming right into our fellowships and destroying them; if we find all kinds of faction and division coming right into our midst and feel powerless to do anything about it; if we find all kinds of circumstances and situations developing that completely destroy the testimony of the Lord Jesus amongst us.
We have no one but ourselves to blame if we have not learned how to watch and pray.
Now, what is the scope of prayer? I hope you do not find what I have to say this evening offensive or difficult, but it has to be said. The trouble with most of us is that we do not go to the prayer time, and we all have legitimate excuses—at least excuses that satisfy ourselves—as to why we do not go.
First of all, I would like to speak about the different kinds of prayer. I shall only spend a few moments on this; I only want to touch on it. We find it in 1 Timothy 2:1:
I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men.
He speaks of four kinds of prayer: supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings.
The word prayer is the word we, by common usage, use for the whole. Actually, prayer in Greek means a pouring out. You may not be asking according to the will of God, but you are asking. And why not? You have not because you ask not.
This is the simplest form of prayer. I do not understand why some people have always got to be so spiritually correct that they do not open their mouths in prayer until they are sure they are right. Why not ask?
It is like when I was a little boy and went to my mother and asked for something. Sometimes she said no. Sometimes she said, “Later.” Now and again there was a dreadful silence. And sometimes she said yes.
This is exactly the same with God. Our problem is that we have made our corporate times of prayer into this hit-and-miss kind of thing. It is the simplest form of prayer. We pour out our heart. Is that not a wonderful thing—to be able to pour out your heart? It reveals a beautiful relationship with your Father, with the Lord, that you can pour out your heart to Him.
You are not going to be hurt if He says no. C. T. Studd said once, “Why ask the Lord for an egg if you can ask for an elephant?” Perhaps you do not understand that African humour, but the point was this: do not just ask small things. Ask anything. Ask the Lord; He will give it to you if it is right.
Very sadly, this is the beginning and the end of most fellowship prayer. Basically, it is this kind of prayer: pouring out of the heart, requests, petition. There is nothing wrong with it, but it is the shallowest form of prayer.
Now look at that word supplication. It is a very interesting word. We find it again and again in the New Testament. It comes from a Greek word describing someone making an appeal, a beseeching appeal, to a king, magistrate, or ruler.
You come with an appeal. I like the English word inquiry most of all. It is a beseeching appeal: “Lord, show us how we pray in this situation. We bring the whole thing before You. We spread it out before You. We do not know what Your will is.”
A supplicant tests out the ruler. He is finding what the ruler will give. What is the mind of the ruler? That is why I think it is interesting that the first of these four kinds of prayer is supplication.
With ordinary prayer, there is simply petition; in one sense, it does not matter whether you know the will of God or not. But with intercession, you have to know the will of God. You cannot actually intercede until you know the will of God.
Intercession is the deepest form of prayer. It does not require a few minutes of your time, a few hours a week, a few days in a month, or a few days in a year. Intercession requires you—your whole spirit, soul, and body; all your time and all that you possess. You cannot be an intercessor unless it is a laid-down life.
Intercession begins with the knowledge of the will of God in a given situation. When the Lord revealed to Abraham that He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, immediately Abraham began to intercede: “Lord, if there are fifty righteous ones there, will You not forgive?”
Then he brought it down to forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and ten. It is an amazing story. But can you see how Abraham’s intercession began with a knowledge of the will of God?
Do you remember how Nehemiah’s great prayer began with an understanding that God wanted to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem? He called upon the Lord, confessing the sin of the people.
Do you remember Moses? When the Lord said, “Step aside, Moses. I am going to destroy this whole people. They have sinned, and I will make of you a nation,” the Lord was testing him. Moses did not say, “Good. I am fed up with these people anyway. They murmur day and night. Start all over again with me, Lord.”
No. Moses said, “You cannot do it, Lord. What will the Egyptians say? What will the nations say—that You brought this people up out of Egypt with Your great and mighty arm, Your outstretched hand, and now destroy them in the wilderness?” The knowledge of what God intended to do was the beginning of his intercession.
How much the Lord must have rejoiced when He saw His own character in Moses.
Remember Daniel’s great intercession in Daniel 9 and Daniel 10. It began when, in his quiet time reading the book of Jeremiah, the Holy Spirit revealed to him that the seventy years’ captivity determined on Jerusalem was about to be accomplished. Then he started his great ministry of intercession.
I could go on and on. Intercession is the deepest form of prayer, and that is why supplication—that beseeching appeal—is put first. You and I can never know anything about that kind of prayer warfare or travail of the Spirit unless we know what the will of God is.
There are certain things we know. We know already that the will of God is that His house be built where we are. His purpose is revealed: that we should be a functioning part of the body of the Lord Jesus; that every life for which you and I have responsibility should grow up into the Lord and reach maturity in the Lord.
We know that the will of God is that you and I should be conformed to the image of His Son. We have understood from our brother Stephen that God is seeking to recover something. This is a revealed purpose of God.
Therefore, once the Lord burdens our heart, we are on sure ground. We know what His will is. He may have to apply it to our situation, our circumstances, and our local complexity, but at least we know that we have the will of God under our feet.
The Holy Spirit can take the Word of God and apply it to our situation so that, in our hands together, it becomes the sword of the Spirit.
Four kinds of prayer: supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings. Thanksgiving is not just thanking the Lord for what He has done. Very often it is thankfulness for what the Lord is.
Have you ever found that? What a wonderful way to approach the Lord when you might have had a terrible day. The enemy makes sure that, whenever we have a time of prayer, if we are real constituent members of the body functioning, that is our worst day.
Whether it is New Zealand, Europe, Israel, or Scandinavia, I always ask people, when I am taking the subject of prayer, “What is the worst day in your week?” In some places it is Tuesday, in some Wednesday, in some Thursday, in some Friday. Then I say, “I guess that is your prayer meeting night.” They always say yes.
Is that not an extraordinary thing? Wherever one goes over the whole world, the enemy makes sure that when the prayer time comes up everybody is all over the place. Then he says, “You cannot be thankful. You have had a terrible day. Do not be a hypocrite.”
So you sit there in heaviness, thinking you are being real. You have no idea that the enemy has done that with two-thirds of those present. They are all sitting there, all being so real: “Oh, I cannot praise the Lord; I have had a terrible day.”
How clever the enemy is. We think the enemy is empty-headed. He is supremely intelligent. Next to God, he has the greatest intelligence. He has been observing human beings for some six thousand years, and he has learned a lot.
So he makes sure that you have a bad time whenever you are approaching the time of prayer. You cannot thank the Lord. And yet praise is the key to so much in prayer warfare.
If we try to tackle things before we praise the Lord, before we express worship and thanksgiving, a kind of heaviness comes upon us. We are unable; we cannot be mobilized.
But when we praise the Lord, like Jehoshaphat when he put the choir in front of the army, things change. I know many a time I have wished I could put the choir out in front of the army—but this time it was a real choir.
He put them in front and said, “Praise the Lord.” He gave them the most extraordinary thing with which to praise the Lord. I would have thought he would say, “Now, a good war song: ‘The Lord is a man of war.’ Sing it!”
But instead he said, “One half of you say, ‘For His lovingkindness endureth for ever,’ and the other half sing back, ‘For His lovingkindness endureth for ever.’” It sounds like a Sunday school picnic. There they were, going out with all these great armies around them, singing as if there were no battle.
They did not even take note of the enemy. They praised the Lord as if they were sitting at home in a very happy little meeting. And as they praised the Lord, the whole lot were defeated.
My dear friends, if you and I are so egocentric—spiritually egocentric—that we cannot praise the Lord if we are having a bad time, have we grown up? I long ago learned that, whatever I felt like, I could be honest with the Lord.
Sometimes I say, “Lord, I feel terrible. I feel terrible. But You are the same. Your truth endures for ever. Your throne has not collapsed. Why, just because I got out of the wrong side of the bed, should I think that the Lord Jesus has abdicated and the whole of heaven is paralyzed because I am a little depressed?”
It is so ridiculous. Of course not. The throne of God remains. The name of the Lord is as powerful as ever. The truth of God endures. The kingdom of God is for ever, whether I am down or whether I am not.
When I start to praise the Lord while I am down, Satan gets very disturbed. He says, “Well, I kicked him down there, and now he is praising the Lord as if he is impervious to his own feelings. I will not do it any more.”
The Lord gets more this way, and this is true. Once you learn to be thankful and find things to praise the Lord for that have nothing to do with you, your feelings, or your circumstances, the enemy starts not to play around with your circumstances in quite the same way. It brings more glory to the Lord and more satisfaction to the Lord.
Here are four types of prayer: supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings. All are necessary. The deepest is intercession, but supplication is essential if we are going to learn how to intercede, and thanksgiving is the foundation of all.
Now I want to say something about the subjects of prayer. You may say, “Well, he is treating us like children. Can he talk to us about subjects for prayer? We all know what the subjects are.” No—just wait. I am not so sure.
Wherever I go, I find the most godly and spiritual people never pray for the president. They never pray for the government. They are far too spiritual. They are more spiritual than the Word of God.
The apostle says clearly to Timothy, in 1 Timothy 2:1–4:
I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men;
For kings and all that are in high place; that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity.
This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.
I am not saying that our prayer meeting should be political, that we should back one political party against another. But we are commanded, encouraged, and exhorted in the Word of God to pray for the king, the president, or whoever it is.
Remember that when Paul said this to Timothy, and told him to pass it on to the churches, they were under godless kings. They were under wicked kings. Yet he said, “Pray for kings and pray for those in authority.”
Why? Not just for political reasons. That there may be law and order, so that the church of God may grow, so that the gospel may go forth, so that men and women may come to a knowledge of the truth.
We pray with the kingdom of God in view. That is why we pray for the president. That is why we pray for the government. That is why we have to pray for international situations at times when we are burdened by the Spirit of God. We have to pray for law and order.
Dear brothers and sisters, the church of God, the true church of God, the body of the Lord Jesus, is meant to be a force upholding law and order by prayer in the secret place, with our eye on the interests of the kingdom of God.
Our Lord taught us in the pattern prayer:
Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Some tell me that this refers only to after the Lord Jesus has come: “One day may Your kingdom come; we do not know when, but perhaps one day let it come. May it be that one day in the far-off future Your will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
No, my dear friends. Our error is this: as the body of the Lord Jesus, joined to our Head in heaven and made one practically and relevantly by the Holy Spirit, we are to stand on earth and let the kingdom of God influence things right where we are.
Let the authority of God, let the throne of God, come to bear upon local conditions, national conditions, personal conditions, and community conditions. Let His will be done. We are custodians of the will of God.
We are here to see that that will of God is done—as it is in heaven, so on earth—where we are a house of prayer for all nations.
The second area in which we find subjects for prayer is the church of God. Here, of course, we are on surer ground with everybody. My time is nearly gone, but I could give you a whole list of Scriptures.
I think of the apostle Paul. It is one of the most amazing studies I could suggest for a Bible study in some of your fellowships: look at all the references to the apostle’s prayers for the churches.
It is one of the most stunning and rewarding studies. He begins nearly every letter—not every letter, but nearly every letter—with a revelation of his prayer burden: “I am praying for you.” Then he tells them what he is praying.
I find this interesting because the prayer burdens of the apostle, whilst they must have been at times quite personal and directed to different people with particular needs, are all to do with the building up of the church, the members of the body reaching maturity, and multiplication in the work of God.
I remember where the apostle speaks of one of those servants and says, “He striveth for you mightily in his prayers.”
Have you ever noticed Galatians 4:19?
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
Have you ever been arrested by that? Notice the word travail. In the Greek, it means the agony of childbirth—labour pains. It is the strongest and most vivid illustration the apostle could use, as if he were saying, “My whole being is consumed with labour pains.”
Then notice the little word again. That, I think, reveals a universe: “My little children, of whom I am again in travail, until Christ be formed in you.”
Apparently he had been in travail for them that they might be born of God. In another place he says, “You may have ten thousand tutors, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I begat you through the gospel.”
Dear children of God, how we need this ministry in the church of God. Do you ever find people in travail that Christ may be formed in others? It seems as if it has gone out of prayer.
Every prayer meeting I go to, people are praying for this thing in the women’s meeting, the Sunday school, the children’s time, someone’s illness, and somebody else’s need—all of which are good. But I never hear anybody who is in travail.
Not necessarily that it would come into a corporate prayer time, because this seems more personal. But if only there were in the church those in whom the Holy Spirit could conceive burdens—genuine burdens. I do not mean eccentric, unbalanced, weird people, but those in whom the Holy Spirit could conceive the kind of burden that consumes a person.
There is a little prefix to this word formed in the Greek. It means “fully formed”—that Christ may be fully formed. He had been in travail that they might be born of God, and now he is in travail again that Christ might be fully formed in them.
This is the missing ministry in the house of God. This is why we have so few people growing up into Christ. It is why there is so little maturity, even where we find so much knowledge—so much biblical knowledge, so much correct knowledge.
People can give us an essay on the eternal purpose of God. They can explain to us the body of Christ. They can tell us about church ground. But when it comes to the church in action and people growing up into Christ, we do not find it, because there is no travail.
The apostle speaks of it in all his letters, as if one of the largest parts of his ministry behind the scenes was that he had a heart and spirit in which the Holy Spirit could travail, in which the Holy Spirit could conceive something.
When something is conceived, there is no way out for it except to birth. But you cannot conceive if you are immature. If I may so speak of the Lord—may He forgive me—this is God’s dilemma: where are there people sufficiently mature, minimally mature, to be able to conceive such burdens?
One other subject for prayer is the work of the Lord. I find that the apostle Paul in all his letters, and even the writer to the Hebrews, whoever he was, asks people, “Pray for us.”
Paul is always doing this, and he is quite specific. He says, “Pray that I may have an open door for the word.” He says, “Pray for me, even though I have these chains. I am an ambassador in chains. I am not bound; I am free in the Lord. Pray for me, that the Word of God may run and may be glorified.”
These are the subjects for prayer.
Now we must finish. But you begin to understand something about prayer now. What does it mean, praying in the Spirit? Why are we told in Colossians 4:2–4 and Ephesians 6:18–19, “watching therein” and “watching thereunto”?
There is an idea in some circles that praying in the Spirit means praying in a tongue. I have nothing against tongues at all. I believe in them firmly, and I think it is a wonderful thing to worship God in a tongue. It is the language of the spirit. But that is praying with the spirit.
Praying in the Spirit may include that, but it is something far more. Praying in the Spirit means praying under the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, praying under the government of the Holy Spirit—praying in the realm of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit inspires your prayer. The Holy Spirit conceives the burden. The Holy Spirit gives you the sword of the Spirit to use. The Holy Spirit gives you the strength to persevere. The Holy Spirit directs you through every phase in that prayer travail until the Holy Spirit finally brings it to fruition.
Praying at every season in the Spirit. Why watching therein and watching thereunto? Because we need to watch. For those who can understand me, we have to watch the anointing.
In a prayer time, the anointing will move through the prayer time. The life and health of that time will depend upon how many people are watching the anointing and following.
Then we are blended together and harmonized together. We do not have to pray long prayers. There can be very short prayers, but we move together under the anointing and with the anointing.
When the anointing leaves a matter, we move on to where the anointing goes. We all know it, even if we feel that we are children in this thing.
In a prayer meeting, someone may pray and it seems ordinary and routine—there is not much in it. Then someone else prays, and it is almost as if heaven opens and everything comes alive. They do not shout; they are not emotional. But they pray, and the whole spiritual temperature begins to rise.
If someone follows that, there is more life and more power. If someone follows it, and someone else follows it, you suddenly find that we are following something together.
We all know it. Then somebody suddenly comes in about something else altogether, and you can feel the whole thing going down. But, by the grace of God, someone else comes in and back we are under the anointing. The Holy Spirit is so gracious in this way. He does not tip us all out because somebody comes in with something wrong.
What we need is to watch therein, watch thereunto. A powerful prayer meeting begins with the direction of the Holy Spirit and ends with the Holy Spirit, even if we have had one or two red herrings, as we say, go across the path.
I hope that helps you.
Jesus put it very simply:
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.
It is interesting how few people take note of the whole statement. I have been in meetings where someone says, “Does anyone agree with me?” Someone says, “Yes.” “Anybody else?” Someone else says, “Yes.” “Now there are three of us. Now we can do something, because the Lord says if we agree to agree, He will have to do it.”
The idea is that the Lord does not actually want to do it, but if, miracle of miracles, two Christians should agree to agree, we can get the Lord into a corner and say, “You have got to do it.” You laugh, but is that not the concept?
The idea is that the Lord does not want to save people, but if two believers agree to agree, He says, “Oh my goodness, I will have to save people.” He does not want to build up the church, but if two agree to agree, He says, “Well, I do not want to do it, but now I am going to have to.”
This is a concept of prayer in which prayer warfare is not with the powers of darkness, but with God. There is a concept of prayer that says we are warring with God.
It partly comes from that amazing story the Lord told about the little Jewish widow and the unjust judge. She went on and on, nagging the judge, until he said, “What is it you want, woman?” Then she told him, and he said, “You have it.”
What the Lord was saying was this: we need enduring faith and overcoming faith, exemplified in that little woman. God is not an unjust judge. He is not impervious. But we need that kind of overcoming, enduring, persevering faith that believes the burden is right.
When we begin to see that prayer is not getting out of God what He does not want to do, or getting the ear of God when He does not want to listen, but working with God for the fulfilment of His purposes on earth, then the prayer time is transformed.
It becomes the most exciting, the most alive, the most instructive, and the most powerful time in the life of the church.
I remember years ago in Britain, when I lived there, we had questions about young ones who had just been saved. Some people said, “Do not bring them into the prayer meeting. They will pray all kinds of things, and it will be a terrible mess. We will not be able to get down to the real business with them there.”
These young believers had heard about the prayer meeting and were enthralled by the stories. As soon as they were saved, they wanted to get into the prayer meeting before they got into the Bible study. Can you believe it?
We brothers wondered what to do. Should we stop them coming? Would it not be better to suggest that they go to the Bible study? But they were going to the Bible study too. So we decided to leave it.
We found the most wonderful thing: those young believers grew more rapidly in the prayer meeting than they ever did in the Bible study, because they saw in the prayer meeting the outworking of the Bible study. They saw things happening in the prayer meeting.
I remember one youngster who was a television addict—a couch potato, as you call them over here. After a prayer time concerning a great national issue, he shook my hand and said, “I must rush now. I have got to get back to the television to see if our prayer has been answered.”
He really believed. Actually, on that occasion, it happened. It was the famous occasion when De Gaulle blocked the entry of Britain into the Common Market.
I shall never forget that young believer, only a month or so old. He was so excited. He could not believe it. He had been in a prayer meeting and prayed against the whole thing. All the politicians thought Britain was going in.
But in that prayer meeting God had revealed something. He saw a group of very ordinary, simple people standing upon the will of God for their country. He rushed off to the television, turned it on, and there was the news. He turned round to his unsaved father and mother and said, “We have just prayed for this.”
I am not saying it always happens like that. But, oh, how exciting, how alive, how powerful is a time of real prayer under the direction of the Spirit of God, when we are conscious that we are going into the throne room of God.
When we are conscious that we are having an audience with the King of kings and Lord of lords, when we know that we are in the presence of the Most High, who rules in the affairs of men, what a transformation takes place in the prayer time.
That is as much as we can say. I can only give you a bird’s-eye picture of this.
They continued stedfastly in the prayers.
May God help us, first of all, to get into the prayers. Then may He teach us to pray. Then may He teach us how to pray. Then may He enable us to continue steadfastly in prayer.
Let us pray.
Dear heavenly Father, we commit ourselves now to You. We have talked about a subject so vital, Lord, and so near to Your heart.
Forgive us, Lord, that so often we have devalued prayer. Somehow, Lord, we have turned what should be the most marvellous experience of Your leadership, Your direction, and Your enabling power into something so artificial, so dull, and so boring that we all long for it to end.
Forgive us, Lord. Will You reveal to us something of this burden on Your heart? By Your Holy Spirit, conceive within us all, even the youngest here, a hunger and a thirst to know You in prayer.
Lord, if it is possible, do such a work that some may, Lord, from this night, become candidates for intercession—not weird, not unbalanced, but real, living believers, ready to be taught and trained by God to intercede.
Oh Lord, do this work, we pray. You have told us, in the light of Your coming, that we are to watch and pray. Help us to obey. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.