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Scripture Reading: Eph. 5:18-20; 6:18-20; Jude 20; Gen. 18:16-33; 1 Sam. 1:10-11; Luke 1:46-55
In this chapter we will consider the proper way to enjoy the Lord, partake of Him, and intercede by expressing His burden in prayer.
Ephesians 3:16 and 17a say, “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith.” Verse 19b says, “That you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” Following this, 5:18 through 20 tell us what kind of persons are strengthened by the Spirit into the inner man, occupied in their heart by Christ, and are filled in their entire being unto all the fullness of God. These verses say, “Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissoluteness, but be filled in spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks at all times for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to our God and Father.”
Psalms, hymns, praises, and thanks are the overflow of being filled in spirit. The fact that this overflow includes singing indicates that it is an enjoyment. Whenever we sing, that is a strong proof that we are enjoying something. Therefore, to be filled in spirit is to enjoy the Lord, and in such a condition we pour out praises and thanks to God. Praises and thanks are the overflow of the inner enjoyment of Christ. Moreover, it is from this enjoyment that the proper living of husbands, wives, children, parents, servants, and masters issue forth in the Christian life (vv. 22, 25; 6:1, 4, 5, 9).
After this, Ephesians tells us that we are entitled and burdened to fight the battle to deal with the enemy of God (6:10-20). In this way, this book concludes with prayer. Verses 18 through 20 say, “By means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints, and for me, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known in boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in a chain, that in it I would speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” When we are filled with the Lord and enjoy Him, we have all the proper items of the Christian life as an issue of this enjoyment. Then we are enabled, entitled, and burdened to fight the battle to deal with God’s enemy by praying always in the spirit with all prayer and petition.
Jude 20 says, “You, beloved, building up yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.” In order to pray in the Holy Spirit, we must be filled with Him; we must inhale Him into us.
Genesis 18 contains a good illustration and a great help concerning prayer. This chapter records a conversation and a conference between Abraham and the Lord. The Lord came to Abraham with two of His angels. Abraham received the Lord, served Him, and ministered to Him, and the Lord enjoyed what Abraham ministered (vv. 1-8). Then while the Lord was enjoying that, He told Abraham what He would do for his wife Sarah, in that she would bring forth a son (v. 10). It seems that this contact between the Lord and Abraham was sufficient.
However, when the Lord and the two angels began to leave, Abraham was not willing to lose His presence, so he escorted them for a certain distance. Verses 16 through 24 say, “The men rose up from there and looked down upon Sodom. And Abraham walked with them to send them away. And Jehovah said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will indeed become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him to keep the way of Jehovah by doing righteousness and justice, that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken concerning him. And Jehovah said, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah, how great it is; and their sin, how very heavy it is! I shall go down and see whether they have done altogether according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know. And the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before Jehovah. And Abraham came near and said, Will You indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed destroy and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it?”
Verses 32 and 33 conclude this portion, saying, “And he said, Oh let the Lord not be angry if I speak yet once more. Suppose ten are found there? And He said, I will not destroy it, because of ten. And Jehovah went away as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.”
It was when Abraham was unwilling to lose the Lord’s presence that the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” This is the imparting of the Lord’s burden for intercession. Within the heart of the Lord there was a burden, and at this time the Lord found the right person to share this burden with. Suppose, however, that when the Lord began to leave, Abraham simply said goodbye. That would have been the end of their contact, and no burden for intercession would have been revealed to Abraham.
Within the Lord there was a very tender feeling. He did not impart His burden to Abraham before he conducted Him for a certain distance. Rather, the Lord kept His burden hidden. It was not until Abraham escorted Him that He imparted His burden. Then it was as if He said, “How can I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? I have to let him know.”
At that time, the Lord revealed to Abraham His strong concern for Sodom. In actuality, His concern was for Lot, who was in Sodom. In this way Abraham came to know what was in the Lord’s heart, so Abraham was burdened to intercede for Lot. Abraham prayed in a personal way, in a way of consulting with the Lord and making a bargain with Him. The Lord agreed that if there were fifty righteous souls, He would spare Sodom, but since Abraham realized there were not fifty, he reduced the number to forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and ten. This intercession was a kind of conference and consultation between Abraham and the Lord.
Apparently Abraham spoke much with the Lord. However, at the end of this account verse 33 says, “Jehovah went away as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.” It does not say that when Abraham ended his speaking with the Lord, he said Amen and left. Instead, it says that the Lord ended His speaking and left. This is a good illustration of proper intercession.
The proper prayer is a prayer in which we enjoy the Lord, drinking and inhaling Him into us. This is the first thing we should do when we come to pray. If anything frustrates us from praying in this way, we must realize that there is something wrong between us and the Lord and deal with it by confessing. We should say, “Lord, there must be something wrong with me. Reveal to me what is wrong.” If we are open to the Lord, the Holy Spirit will give us the sense that we are wrong in certain things, and we should follow that sense to confess our wrongdoings and apply the Lord’s blood. If after this we still have the sense that something is frustrating us, yet we do not know what it is, we should ask the Lord to cover us and cleanse us concerning whatever it is with His precious blood. We can take the standing of the cleansing of His blood, claiming it by faith. Then right away we should forget about the frustrating sense, look to the Lord, and absorb something of Him. We need to learn to enjoy the Lord in this way.
We need to spend a certain amount of time to absorb the Lord. We cannot do it in a fast way. We should look to the Lord and speak something about the Lord Himself. This is to breathe Him in. We should not first pray for many things according to our memory. When we come to the Lord, we need to forget about those things and not be burdened for anything other than the Lord Himself. We simply must come to contact Him, breathe Him in, and enjoy Him. This is the first matter in prayer.
The second main item of prayer is to express something of the Lord. This means that the Lord must burden us with some desire of His heart. His heart’s desire becomes a burden to us. After we have inhaled the Lord and absorbed something of Him into us, what we have absorbed becomes a burden within us, and we express this burden in prayer. This is the genuine and proper way to pray.
Sometimes this expression in prayer may be concerning our condition. The Lord may burden us that we are fleshly or sloppy. If He does this, we should have nothing different to say. Whatever else we say will not have the anointing. We may have the anointing only to say, “Lord, deliver me from my present situation. I am so fleshly, and I am so sloppy. Grant me full deliverance.” Sometimes we have to cry out and even weep with tears in our prayer. The more we pray in this way, the more we will touch and be touched by the anointing.
After we hear a message exhorting us not to be fleshly and sloppy, we may go to the Lord in our own effort and pray about our fleshiness and sloppiness. However, this does not work, and it brings out no change within us. We should not try to correct ourselves in this way. Rather, we must first go to the Lord to deal with every frustrating and negative thing, and then we must absorb the Lord, enjoy Him, and take Him in. Then something of the Lord Himself within us will burden us to pray.
Sometimes the Lord’s burden will be something for the church, for a certain brother, or for a certain work. That is the right time to pray for the church, to pray for that brother, or to pray for that work. This is not a prayer initiated by ourselves. It is a prayer initiated by the Lord within. This is more than just a petition to the Lord; it is an expression of the Lord. We express the Lord from within because we have been filled with the Lord. Our prayer is something of the Lord, even the Lord Himself, for us to express. This is the proper way to pray, not only to enjoy the Lord but also to express the Lord through intercession. To pray in this way is to pray in the Holy Spirit. We have received something of the Lord, and we are filled with Him within. Now because we have inhaled and absorbed the Lord, whatever we pray will be something from the Holy Spirit.
Many Christians practice to pray according to a prayer list or notebook of names. When they go to pray, they first check the proper entry in their prayer notebook. These, of course, are very good and devoted Christians, and sometimes the Lord works sovereignly through this kind of prayer. The Lord is gracious. Like the air, He comes into any place where there is even a small crack. However, this does not mean that this way of prayer is the right way. It is not the best way. The best way to pray can be compared to opening the windows. The brothers who take care of the meeting hall come before the meeting to open the windows and the doors. This is the right way to let the air in. If there is a hole in the glass or a crack in a board, the air can force itself in, but that is a poor way to let the air in. Similarly, the best way to pray is to “open our windows” to heaven, that is, to open ourselves to the Lord and contact Him. We all must learn day by day to open ourselves to the Lord, to “open our windows” to Him, just as Daniel prayed toward Jerusalem through his open windows three times a day (Dan. 6:10).
We need to open ourselves to the Lord and spend time with Him. We must not think that we do not have enough time. We should make no excuses about our time. The sisters are busy with cooking, washing, and many things, but they cannot say that they have no time to breathe. Even while they are cooking, they must open themselves to the Lord. In the past year and a half, we have composed two hundred thirty new hymns. Many times while I was composing, I said, “Lord, I open to You. O Lord, come in.” This illustrates that we cannot say that we are too busy to pray. While we are working, we need to open ourselves to the Lord. To pray in a closed room may be necessary sometimes, but this is not the normal, healthy way. Once when I had an illness for two and a half years, I spent much time to breathe in a concerted way. However, that was an abnormal situation. Today when I am healthy, I breathe all the time, whatever I do, wherever I go, and with whomever I contact.
We have to learn to contact the Lord in this way. We must open ourselves to the Lord to absorb something of Him into us. If we sense a frustration, we should immediately ask the Lord what is wrong and confess it. If we are not clear about what specifically is wrong, we should tell the Lord that we are under His blood, and we apply its cleansing. Then we have to contact the Lord by faith to praise Him, look to Him, appreciate Him, adore Him, behold His beauty, and stay in His presence for a certain time to praise Him and speak something concerning Him.
The more we contact the Lord in this way, the more we are filled with Him. After we enjoy the Lord, there will spontaneously be a deep sense within us, and we will have a burden to pray. We will forget our own affairs, problems, burdens, and troubles, and gradually we will have the burden of intercession. We will have the burden in prayer to express something of the Lord, and we can inquire of the Lord whether or not that is His burden, just as Abraham became burdened with the Lord’s desire concerning Lot and prayed while conversing and consulting with the Lord. After inhaling the Lord and being filled with Him, we will have the burden to pray, sometimes for ourselves and sometimes for our family, the church, the saints, the gospel, sinners, and even for the churches in faraway places. We will be one with the Lord to enjoy Him and express Him. This is the proper meaning of praying in the Holy Spirit. It is only in this way that we can pray in the Holy Spirit and pray unceasingly (1 Thes. 5:17).
There is no need to be formal or to have a good composition in our prayers. Instead, we should speak freely with the Lord. The more we practice to pray in this way, the more we will pray in simple words, even in single words. Many times we may simply sigh in our prayer. These sighs are like the “selah” in the Psalms or like the rests in musical notation. This makes our prayer more meaningful. After praying for a while, we can pause for refreshment and a rest, a selah. We should not rush or utter something too quickly. Our resting gives the Lord a chance to utter something. If we have a small silence in our speaking, the Lord will give us further utterance. Sometimes we need to rest and even grope for utterance. This will give the Lord a chance to impress us with some new utterance. It is easy to practice our personal times of prayer in this way.
When we pray to adore the Lord and praise Him, we have to learn to drop the natural and religious thought. We have many positive items from the Scriptures with which we can praise the Lord. There is no need for us to use utterance that comes from the religious, natural feeling. We should learn to speak things from deep within and also to use the utterances from the Bible. We see this kind of speaking in the prayer of Samuel’s mother (1 Sam. 1:10-11) and the praise of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus (Luke 1:46-55). We also need to learn to pray in the way Paul prayed in Ephesians 1:17 through 23 and 3:14 through 21. When we praise and adore the Lord, we need to drop our natural thought, concept, and feeling and speak something heavenly, spiritual, new, full of life, full of the anointing, and full of the sweetness of the Lord.
Whenever we come to pray, we must not bring our old things to the Lord. We simply must come to contact the Lord and open ourselves to Him. We should not consider what to say. We should forget our natural mentality and learn to sense something of the Lord within, exercising the inner sense to speak something to Him. We need not compose our utterance. Rather, when we sense something in our spirit, in the depths of our being, we should express it in a brief way. To compose our prayer will frustrate the inner sense. If, for example, we sense that the Lord is sweet, we can say, “O Lord! Oh, You are so sweet.” The Lord knows what we mean; there is no need to complete our utterance. Sometimes according to our sense we may pray, “O Lord, You are so deep. This satisfies me.” It is sufficient simply to utter something from within us with simple words and phrases, without any composition. We should simply express our inner sense.
For this purpose, we need to spend adequate time in our prayer. If possible, we should shut ourselves up with the Lord and not let anything intrude into our time with Him. Then we will have something to express. If we do not have something to express, we should not compose anything. There is no such law that every time we enjoy the Lord we must have a burden to express. To do this may be of our own manufacture. If we do not have something particular to express, we should just enjoy the Lord. It may be that in the morning we simply enjoy Him, and then two hours later the expression will come. At that time we may spontaneously have a burden to pray. This will be something with which the Lord burdens us. We must not make our coming to the Lord into a routine. This will deaden us. Instead, the principle is this — we come to the Lord to open ourselves and to sense a burden to pray.
When we come into the presence of the Lord to pray with a burden, we need to focus on one matter at a time. We cannot come to a feast to eat too many dishes at once. To pray for many different matters without focusing on a real burden may indicate that our practice is merely religious. When we pray in this way, we cannot tell in particular for what we have prayed. When we come to the Lord, we should be touched by Him with a certain matter. Sometimes we may be touched by the love of the Lord, His holiness, or His presence. When we receive a certain matter from the Lord, we will be burdened for that one thing.
Consider Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9:3 through 19. It is a long prayer, but it stresses mainly one point — the revelation that at the expiration of seventy years the Lord would release His people and bring them back from captivity (v. 2). Daniel was burdened for what he saw, and his prayer concentrates on that one matter. Similarly, Psalm 119 with one hundred seventy-six verses is the longest chapter in the Scriptures, but it focuses on only one thing — the word of God. There is a real burden in the praise of that Psalm. Our prayer should have one main focus. It is difficult to have two burdens at one time. We cannot tell if such a prayer is “beef, mutton, or pork.” If our prayer is a collection of many items together without a real burden, it may indicate that it is out of our natural self and religious knowledge.
We need to drop the things from our natural and religious background and come to the Lord with a single, simple heart and an open spirit to be touched by Him. If we learn not to speak in a natural way, we will speak in a proper way. A young musician once applied to learn under an expert in Italy. That expert said to him, “I will receive you as a student on one condition. For three years you must not open your mouth to speak.” The young man considered whether or not he could learn anything if he did not speak, but eventually he agreed to the condition. He remained under that tutor for three years until one day the tutor told him, “Now speak to express your feeling.” Once the young man began to speak, what he expressed was everything that the tutor had taught him. If the student had been allowed to express himself for those three years, that would have been a frustration to his learning. In the same way, many times we need to come to the Lord to be silent. At such times we should say nothing from ourselves but let the Lord teach us what to say.
We must avoid all religious thought and understanding when we pray. Sometimes we have to pray with a long prayer, but still we need to concentrate on a main burden. Sometimes we may pray, “Lord, be merciful to me.” That is a good prayer. In Matthew 20:32 and 33 Jesus asked two blind men, “What do you want Me to do for you?” They replied, “Lord, that our eyes may be opened.” As a prayer, that was good enough. There was no need to say, “Lord, I know You are the Son of David. You came with the power of God. You are sovereign. You can do everything. If You will, You can heal me.” We should learn not to speak in this way when we pray. Then we will have something proper to speak. The more we pray, the more we enjoy the Lord, absorb Him, and inhale Him. Then we will have a burden that comes out of our being filled with the Lord, and we can utter and express something of the Lord.
