Week of 13 September 2020
A Timely Word concerning the World Situation and the Lord’s Recovery (4) — Praying Persistently with God as Our Faith
In Mark 11:20-24 the Lord Jesus taught His disciples to pray by faith for executing God’s will according to God’s economy. When the praying one is mingled with God and is one with God, God becomes his faith; this is what it means to have faith in God. Only prayers that are out of faith will touch God; without faith prayer is ineffectual. Faith is believing that we have received what we have asked for, not that we will receive.
The prayer in Mark 11:20-24 is a prayer with authority; this kind of prayer is directed not toward God but toward “this mountain”. A prayer with authority does not ask God to do something; instead, it exercises God’s authority and applies this authority to deal with problems and things that ought to be removed. A prayer with authority is one in which we tell the things that are frustrating us to go away. The church can have such a prayer with authority by having full faith, being without doubt, and being clear that what we do is fully according to God’s will. Prayer with authority has much to do with the overcomers; every overcomer must learn to speak to “this mountain”.
In Luke 18:1-8 the Lord Jesus told the disciples a parable “to the end that they ought always to pray and not lose heart”. First, we need to know God as He is revealed here. God is illustrated as the unrighteous judge. Furthermore, the widow in verse 3 signifies the believers; in a sense, the believers in Christ are a widow in the present age because their Husband, Christ, is apparently absent from them. Secondly, like the widow in the parable, we believers in Christ have an opponent, Satan the devil, concerning whom we need God’s avenging. This parable indicates the suffering we have from our opponent during the Lord’s apparent absence. The opponent is troubling us all the time.
While our opponent is persecuting us, it seems that our God is not righteous, for He allows His children to be unrighteously persecuted. Throughout the centuries, thousands upon thousands of honest and faithful followers of the Lord Jesus have suffered unrighteous persecution; even today many are undergoing unrighteous treatment. Our God seems to be unjust, since He does not come in to judge and vindicate. However, apparently, He is not doing anything; actually, in a hidden way He is doing many things for us.
The widow in the parable was suffering due to the trouble from her opponent. She “kept” coming to the unrighteous judge and asking him to avenge her of her opponent. Therefore, we ought to pray persistently for this avenging and should not lose heart. Although the Lord appears to be unrighteous, we still must appeal to Him, pray persistently, and bother Him again and again, for He will carry out quickly the avenging of His chosen ones, who “cry to Him day and night”. Here, God’s judgment upon the earth—casting fire to the earth—is the answer to the prayers of the saints with Christ as the incense.
At the end of the teaching concerning persistent prayer, the Lord said, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” Literally, the Greek words rendered “faith” mean “the faith”; this denotes the persistent faith for our persistent prayer, like that of the widow. The faith through which we were saved is the initial stage of faith; the faith that brought us in to a life union with Christ is the linking faith— the faith that comes into us through our contacting the Triune God continually so that we may live by the Son of God.
The linking faith is the divine requirement for the overcomers to meet Christ in His triumphant return. Linking faith is the Triune God moving in us to link us to His unsearchable riches. Linking faith is the faith of the believers who have no trust in themselves; rather, their trust is in God. When the Lord Jesus returns, He will find a number of overcomers who are living by the linking faith and will regard them as treasures for His kingdom in the thousand years of His reign.
(Source:https://www.churchintaipei.org/weeklynews/archive/1139.pdf )
CHRIST AS THE INTERCESSOR
We have to pay special attention to the binding prayer and loosing prayer. We have to bind many things, and we have to loose many things. We are not begging but binding and loosing with authority. May God be gracious to us so that all of us can learn to pray with authority. Not only do we have to learn to pray, we also have to learn to know the victory of Christ. We have to loose with the victory of Christ, and we have to bind with the victory of Christ. We have to bind all the things that are contrary to God’s will. To pray with authority is for heaven to rule on the earth; it is for the earth to exercise the heavenly authority. Every one of us is a man of heaven. As such, we have the authority of heaven. We are merely sojourning on earth today. Everyone who is called by the name of the Lord is His representative on earth. We are God’s messengers. We have His life, and we have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the Son of His love. This is why we have the heavenly authority. Everywhere we go, we can exercise our heavenly authority. We can rule over the earth through heaven. May God be gracious to us. I hope that we can all be prayer warriors for the Lord and that we will all be overcomers through the authority of Christ so that Christ’s victory can be manifested.
Finally, there is a sober warning: we must submit ourselves to God’s authority. If we do not submit to God’s authority, we cannot pray with authority. Not only must we submit to God’s authority with respect to His position, but we also must submit to His authority in our daily living and in all practical matters. There was a young brother who was once casting out a demon from a young girl. The demon told the girl to undress herself. The brother commanded the demon with authority, saying, “I command you in the name of Jesus not to undress yourself.” The demon immediately said, “All right. If you do not allow me to undress, I will not do it.” If the young brother was not victorious in his living, he would have been defeated before the demon. In that case, not only would the demon have ignored his command, but it would have exposed his sins. Brothers and sisters, we know that the whole creation was originally under man’s dominion. But the creation is disobedient to man today because man will not obey God’s word. Daniel was not hurt by the lions when he was thrown into the lions’ den, because he was innocent before God and he had done no harm before the king. This is why God sent His angel and shut the lions’ mouth. A poisonous snake could not hurt the hand of God’s faithful servant Paul, yet worms could kill the proud Herod. Brothers and sisters, if we submit to God’s authority, the demons will be afraid of us and submit to our authority.
The Bible shows us the relationship between prayer, fasting, and authority. Prayer indicates that we seek after God, while fasting indicates that we deny our self. The first right God gave to man was the right to eat. The first thing God gave to Adam was food. To fast is to renounce one’s lawful right. Many Christians only fast but do not deny themselves. In such a case, their fasting cannot be considered fasting. The Pharisees fasted on the one hand and extorted on the other hand. If they were really fasting, they should have returned what they had extorted from others. Prayer is to seek for God, while fasting is to deny the self. We have to seek God and deny the self at the same time. When our pursuit of God and our denial of self is joined and mingled together, immediately there is faith. When we have faith, we have the authority to command the demons to go away. Brothers and sisters, if we seek after God and deny our self, immediately we will have faith and authority and be able to utter prayers of faith and authority. Brothers and sisters, the most important prayers and the most spiritual prayers are prayers of authority.
(The Prayer Ministry of the Church, chap. 4, pp. 72-74)
BAPTISM TESTIMONY
The prayer life of Christ is the center of God’s execution of His government on earth. We need to realize that whenever we pray in the spirit, Christ is praying in our praying. The prayer we offer at the incense altar will be intercessory prayers, not private or personal prayers. Whenever we open our mouth to pray at the incense altar, the prayer that will issue forth will not be personal, individual prayer. It will be intercessory prayer. At that time we will be, in our experience, a real member of Christ, a genuine part of the Body-Christ, the corporate Christ.
Who today is praying that God would dispense His grace into people? Who is praying in such a way as to motivate God’s throne of authority to judge this age? Christ has a great deal of incense, but where are the prayers that are qualified to receive the incense of Christ? Is Christ able to add His incense to our prayers? Therefore, it is very important for us to see this concerning our prayer life.
As those who are seeking the Lord, we in the recovery, both individually and corporately, must learn one thing—to pray. We need a praying life. The real praying life is always a life of interceding. Genuine prayer is not mainly to pray for ourselves; it is to pray continually for others. The proper prayer life is a life of praying for others, of interceding for them. We need to pray for the churches throughout the earth and for all the saints. We need to pray for the older ones, the younger ones, and the opposers. We need such an interceding life. The intercession offered at the incense altar should daily be increasing.
(The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 419)
