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Scripture Reading: Acts 1:14; 2:42; 6:4; Eph. 6:18
Hymns, #846
I would recommend that we pray-read all of the verses cited above in the Scripture Reading so that we can enter into the burden of this chapter.
In these days we are burdened for the blending of the saints in the vital groups. We may pray for this blending and talk about it, but how can we be blended to have the real one accord? The Greek word for one accord is homothumadon, from homo, meaning “same,” and thumos, meaning “mind, will, purpose (soul, heart).” The one accord refers to the harmony in our inner being, in our mind and will. In Matthew 18:19 the Lord said, “If two of you are in harmony on earth concerning any matter for which they ask, it will be done for them from My Father who is in the heavens.” In harmony here is as musical sounds are in harmony. We need this harmony as our one accord. How can we have this?
We have to realize that according to God’s ordination our soul should not direct our entire being. Of course, all fallen men are either directed by the flesh to live a fleshly, sinful life or directed by the soul to live a kind of philosophical life, logical life, or ethical life. A fleshy and fleshly man is a person who lives in the flesh under the influence and nature of the flesh (1 Cor. 3:1, 3a). A person whose soul dominates his entire being is what the Bible calls a soulish man (2:14). Such a person attempts to control the lusts of his flesh by his logic of ethics. That kind of control is directed by the soul. But according to the God-ordained way, it should be our spirit that is strong to direct our soul, even to control our entire being. A person who is dominated, governed, directed, moved, and led by his mingled spirit is a spiritual man (v. 15). Today we desire to be blended, and our being blended will surely produce a one accord in our spirit under the direction of the Spirit.
In Matthew 18:19 the Lord spoke of two praying together on earth in harmony. In the book of Acts we can see that the one hundred twenty practiced the Lord’s command to pray in harmony, to pray in one accord (1:14). Their one accord was produced by their being in the spirit. In the four Gospels none of the disciples understood anything about being in the spirit. The Lord called James and John “Sons of Thunder” because of their impetuosity (Mark 3:17). When the Lord and His disciples were not received by the Samaritans, James and John said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” The Lord rebuked them and said, “You do not know of what kind of spirit you are” (Luke 9:54-55). They did not care for the Spirit because their spirit had not yet been regenerated. But in the evening of the day of resurrection, the Lord came to the disciples and breathed Himself as the Spirit into them (John 20:22). The Lord became a life-giving Spirit on the day of resurrection and was breathed into His disciples.
With the spiritual things in the Bible, there is first the position and then the reality. The birthright is first a positional matter, and then the reality follows. First Peter 1:3 says that we all were regenerated through the resurrection of Christ. When Christ was resurrected, we were also resurrected (Eph. 2:6) and regenerated. The position of our regeneration was fully gained by Christ on the day of His resurrection. Thus, we were positioned into the resurrection almost two thousand years ago. But we did not receive this reality until the day that we confessed our sins and believed in the Lord Jesus.
Only the Lord Himself knew about the position of our regeneration. We did not realize anything about this until the day we received the Lord in time as the reality of regeneration. This may be compared to a small child having the position to receive his birthright. He does not know anything about his birthright until he becomes twenty-one years old. Then he receives the reality of his birthright. In the morning of the day of His resurrection, the Lord gained the position of regeneration for His disciples. But that evening the Lord breathed Himself as the Spirit into the disciples. That was when they received the Lord as the life-giving Spirit for the reality of their regeneration.
By reading the New Testament we can see the difference between what the disciples were in the Gospels and what they were in Acts. Even though the disciples followed the Lord quite faithfully in His earthly ministry, they were either in the mind or in the flesh. Peter even acted in a way that caused the Lord Jesus to call him “Satan” (Matt. 16:23). But in Acts their situation was entirely different. In Acts they were spiritual persons. How could the one hundred twenty pray together for ten days in one accord? Only people who are in the spirit could do this. They were people in the spirit because the Spirit had been breathed into them. A number of times in the Gospels Peter spoke in a nonsensical way and was rebuked or corrected by the Lord. But in Acts 1 he could expound and interpret the Bible (vv. 15-22). This proves that the disciples were in the spirit in Acts 1. This is why they were able to pray together in one accord for ten days. They prayed in one accord, and they prayed to build up the one accord. There was a very strong one accord among them.
We cannot say that there is no one accord among us today. To say this is not fair. We do have the one accord, but everything has its degree. There may be many graduates in a school, but their graduation is in different degrees. Some graduate as “straight A” students. Others graduate as “C” or even “C–” students. All these students graduate, but they graduate in different degrees. We have the one accord today, but how high and how deep is our one accord? This is a problem. The one hundred twenty prayed in one accord for ten days. Probably on the tenth day their one accord went to the heavens. It became the strongest and the highest one accord. At that time the heavens opened, and the Spirit was poured out.
Today we need to be blended together by much and thorough prayer. In our prayer we should not merely exercise our spirit but also release our spirit. Praying is the unique way for us to exercise our spirit and even the more to release our spirit. When our spirit is released, we can be blended together in this released spirit. Actually, when our spirit is released, there is no need to talk about blending. The released spirits are a kind of blending.
When we come together to pray, we need to release our spirit by praying short prayers. Our prayers are too long. The long prayer is a prayer of composition. It is not prayer out of a burden. The real burdened prayer would not be a long composed prayer. At one time in the 1960s when we were in Los Angeles in Elden hall, our prayers were very short. Sometimes we had over two hundred in our prayer meeting. Each saint would pray one sentence, and we were like one person praying together. We coordinated together in our prayer, and there were no long prayers. In one recent meeting I pointed out to some of the co-workers that their prayers were too long.
Soon after I was saved, I met with the Brethren. We always had a long prayer meeting with long prayers. In that long meeting there were only four or five who prayed. Four or five occupied the entire time, and the composition of their prayers was mostly the same. Furthermore, among these four or five who prayed, we usually knew in what order they would pray. When the prayer came to the last one, everyone knew that after his prayer, we would soon be dismissed. Our church prayer meeting has reached this kind of situation with long prayers. Long prayers kill, but short prayers stir us up. Short prayers fan our spirit into flame.
It is very difficult for the brothers and sisters who are used to praying long prayers to have a change to pray in a short way. Those who pray long prayers always lay a foundation of much explanation in their prayer. They explain to the Lord why they need to pray, or they give the Lord directions about how to answer their prayer. They may say, “Lord, You are so good. We are not praying for ourselves. We are not on the earth. Lord, we are today in the heavens. Even we are at Your throne...” We need to drop this way of explaining in our prayer to the Lord. In order to blend ourselves together in the vital groups, we must drop the old way of praying long prayers. We should pray short prayers, simply telling the Lord what we want Him to do for us (cf. Mark 10:51).
Acts 2:42 shows us the importance of such prayer. The three thousand who entered into the church life all continued in four things: the teaching of the apostles, the fellowship of the apostles, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. Prayer was one of the four critical items in which they continued. Today I would say that we have the first three items. We remain in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, and we have the breaking of bread, the remembrance of the Lord at His table, every Lord’s Day. Today our best meeting is the Lord’s table meeting, but our prayer is inferior. Even our attendance in the prayer meeting was very low at one time, and the persons who prayed mostly were dead and dying. They prayed in a dead and dying way. Thus, many of the saints lost the appetite to come to the prayer meeting.
The prayers in the prayer meeting have been long prayers, full of explaining to the Lord and of giving the Lord descriptions and instructions. Very few would ask the Lord directly what they wanted Him to do. There was also very little commanding in our prayers. It was rare to hear anyone pray, “Lord, we give You the word. We give You the command. You have to come in to do it.” This kind of commanding prayer is needed (Isa. 45:11). We need to learn to pray in a proper way in the prayer meetings. We should pray slowly, pray emphatically, and pray spiritually. We should practice this kind of prayer in all the vital groups.
The three thousand who were gained on the day of Pentecost continued steadfastly in the prayers of the Spirit with a real burden. First, the one hundred twenty continued steadfastly in prayer for ten days. Then the three thousand continued steadfastly in prayer. Acts 6:4 also tells us that the apostles made the decision to continue steadfastly in prayer and the ministry of the word.
In Ephesians 6:18 Paul says that we need to pray at every time in spirit and watch unto this in all perseverance. We need to be watchful, on the alert, for the maintaining of our prayer life. Praying must be followed by watching. We have to add watching to our praying. After we make the decision to pray, many things will rise up to keep us away from praying. This is why we have to watch unto our prayer in all perseverance. To watch means that we are on the battlefield. The battle is raging, and there are enemies around us.
If we want to continue steadfastly in prayer, we need to schedule and even to budget our time in the way that we would budget our money. If we do not budget our money, we will spend it without any control. Since we budget our money, we should also budget our time. In the budget of our time, we should set up at least two or three times for prayer. In the morning we could pray for at least fifteen minutes. Then according to our schedule, we could budget another time for prayer in the mid-morning, noon, or afternoon. Then we can budget another time in the evening before going to bed. We should budget these three times for prayer.
If you make a decision beginning from tomorrow to pray at certain times, be prepared for things in the environment rising up to frustrate you. As you begin to pray, someone may knock on the door. Throughout the days of the year no one knocked on your door at this time except after you made the decision to use this time to pray. When you go to the door to see who it is, you may find out that the person knocked on the wrong door. That may cause you to be angry and lose your heart to pray. Thus, the fifteen minutes that you set aside for prayer will be annulled. If you decide to pray at 10 A.M., three friends may come to visit you at that time to spend an hour with you. We have to realize that such things are the attack of the enemy against our prayer.
It is best not to answer the door or the telephone during our prayer time. Actually, we are too busy to go to the door or answer the phone during our time of prayer. We are busy in contacting our Lord, our King. Since we are with our King, how can we go away from Him to attend to other things? We should not allow anything to interrupt our prayer time, our time with our King. In one sense we should consider that we are away from home during our prayer time. We are away from home taking care of our King. The Lord could say to us, “You are here occupied by Me. How could you leave Me here, go to answer the door, and be occupied by your friends for one hour?” Surely this is not right. We need to pray at every time in spirit and watch unto this prayer in all perseverance. Perseverance means to be very strong in our insistence. Our attitude in our prayer should be that we are now with our King and that we would not be interrupted from having this time with Him.
We have to watch. The enemy will always do things to annul our prayer time. If this were not the case, the apostle would not have charged us to watch unto prayer in all perseverance. We should not allow our prayer to be spoiled, captured, or annulled. We need to watch and be on the alert to maintain our prayer time. We should always keep our prayer time. During this time, we should consider that we are away from home because we are busy with our King, with our Lord.
The proper prayer always releases us. If we pray and our spirit is not exercised and released, our prayer is wrong. Prayer must exercise our spirit and release our spirit. When our spirit is released by our prayer, we are released persons. When we are no longer bound but released, we are always happy. This is why Paul says, “Always rejoice, unceasingly pray” (1 Thes. 5:16-17). To rejoice all the time is related to praying unceasingly.
Furthermore, if we are not released, we cannot be blended with others. If we come to the meeting with a quiet spirit, we are bound. If we attend the vital group meetings in this way, there is no possibility of our being blended. When you are released, when I am released, and when everyone is released, that is the real blending. The way for us to become blended is through prayer that releases our spirit.
Acts 1:14 says that the one hundred twenty continued steadfastly with one accord in prayer, “together with the women.” We need to consider why the Bible says “with the women” in this verse. Every word in the Bible is written with a purpose. I hope that the sisters would give me the permission to speak a frank word. The one accord is always troubled by the women. When the sisters have no problem in the church, the church will most likely have no problem. In the church life there are generally more sisters than brothers. In the home in Bethany spoken of in John 12, there were two sisters and one brother (vv. 2-3). We can see from this that the church life greatly depends upon the sisters. When the sisters are okay, the church life will most likely be okay. The vital future of the vital groups greatly depends upon the sisters. If the sisters are blended, the blending of the groups will be successful.
In order to be blended, all of us need to release our spirit in our prayer. We may pray together without being released in our prayer. Instead, all of us may be bound. Most of the good composers of long prayers are sisters. Few among the brothers would pray long prayers full of explanations and descriptions. I would advise some of the sisters not to pray that many times. Also, we should not pray too fast because the saints will not be able to follow our prayer. Paul indicates that we need to pray in a way that the saints will be able to say Amen to our prayer (1 Cor. 14:16). We should pray so that others can hear our prayer, understand our prayer, realize our prayer, agree with our prayer, and thus say Amen to our prayer.
I realize that all of us in this training love the Lord. To find a group of people loving the Lord and loving the recovery so much is a treasure. But we have all been annulled by our shortcomings. We all have our particular shortcomings, which annul us and forfeit our proper function. We all have defects, which prevent us from being fully profitable to the church. But in spite of all our disadvantages, the Lord is still with His recovery.
Our cooperating with the Lord to move to Russia has been a great encouragement to me. Within less than one year we raised up churches in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The Lord has blessed us with the laborers, with the material supply, and with the fruitful result in His move in Russia. This shows that in spite of all our shortcomings and defects, the Lord has still blessed His recovery.
I appreciate that all of us love the Lord’s recovery. If we did not love the recovery, we would not be here. But we need to see that in the seven epistles to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the first dealing of the Lord is concerning the recovery of the first love (2:4). Do we love Him? Surely we do. But do we give Him the preeminence, the first place, in all things? To give the Lord the first place in all things is to love Him with the first love, the best love. In order to give Him the preeminence, we must be willing to be adjusted, to be broken, to be made nothing, so that the Lord can have a way in us, through us, and among us for the building up of His organic Body.
In this chapter I would also like to recommend Hymns, #846. It will help us to read, pray, and sing this hymn:
