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Matt. 16:18-19; 18:18-19; Eph. 6:17-20; Ezek. 36:37; Isa. 62:6-7; 1 John 1:9; Acts 1:14; 4:31; 12:5; 13:2-4; 20:36
I. The principles of God’s work
II. The prayer ministry of the church — binding and loosing what has been bound and loosed in heaven
III. Examples of prayer in Acts
IV. Two types of prayer
А. Prayer to have fellowship with God
B. Prayer for God’s work
V. Individual and corporate prayer
VI. Pray specifically and persistently
VII. Pray at set times and all the time
VIII. Pray with the Word and a note book
In this lesson we will fellowship concerning one of the most crucial ministries of the church — the prayer ministry. We agree that Christians should pray. Do you pray? How often do you pray? How consistent is your prayer? Are your prayers answered? If you ask any Christian the same questions, you will find that most Christians rarely pray. Why? Most of us do not realize that prayer is important. We may not know how to pray, or we may not understand the principles of prayer. Our prayer may be non-effective and meaningless. We hope that this lesson will change all that. After you study this lesson and practice accordingly, you will be a proper serving one in the prayer ministry of the church.
[When God works, He does so with specific law and definite principle. Even though He could do whatever pleases Him, yet He never acts carelessly. He always performs according to His determinate law and principle. Unquestionably, He can transcend all these laws and principles, for He is God and is quite capable of acting according to His own pleasure. Nonetheless, we discover a most marvelous fact in the Bible, which is, that in spite of His exceeding greatness and His ability to operate according to His will, God ever acts along the line of the law or principle which He has laid down. It seems as though He deliberately puts Himself under the law to be controlled by His own law.]
Do you know the principle of God’s work? As in mathematics and science, once people understand a given principle they can achieve predictable and consistent results every time. The law of gravity, Newton’s law, and E=MC2 are examples of such principles. If you know the principle of God’s work, you will pray much to cause God to work. We know that God’s ultimate work is to build the church. There are many steps required to achieve this goal, such as our friends’ salvation, reading the Word and prayer, coming to meetings, etc. What principle does God use to accomplish His work? There are seven steps to His principle.
The first step is that God has a will to do something. The second step is that God reveals His will to man through His Word by His Spirit. The third step is that God’s church responds to His will by agreeing with it in prayer. The fourth step is that God accomplishes the thing that He wills. The fifth step is that we go and reap the accomplished work. The sixth step is to give God thanks. The seventh step is to enjoy the accomplished work together with God and the church.
[We have already mentioned how God has His will concerning all things, but that He will do nothing by Himself alone and independently. He will take action only after the free will on earth responds to His will. Were there only the will in heaven, God would make no move; the heavenly move will be accomplished on earth only when He is assured of the same will on earth. This is what we today call the ministry of the church. Believers need to realize that the ministry of the church does not consist merely of the preaching of the gospel — it most certainly does include this, let there be no mistake of that — but also the church’s ministry includes the bringing down to the earth the will that is in heaven. But exactly how does the church bring this about? It is by praying on earth. Prayer is not a small, insignificant, non-essential thing as some would tend to think. Prayer is a work. The church says to Him, “God, we want Your will.’’ This is called prayer. After the church knows the will of God, she opens her mouth to ask for it. This is prayer. If the church does not have this ministry, she is not of much use on earth.
Many devotional prayers, prayers of fellowship, and prayers of request cannot be a substitute for prayer as ministry or work. If all our prayers are simply devotional or merely consist of fellowshipping and asking, our prayer is too small. Prayer as work or ministry means that we stand on God’s side, desiring what He desires. To pray according to God’s will is a most powerful thing. For the church to pray signifies that she has discovered God’s will and is now voicing it. Prayer is not only asking God, it is also the making of a declaration. As the church prays, she stands on God’s side and declares that what man wants is what He wants. If the church should so declare, the declaration will be at once effectual.]
Matthew 18:18 says, “Truly I say to you, Whatever you bind on the earth shall be what has been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on the earth shall be what has been loosed in heaven.’’ Who are the “you’’ here? [They are the church, because in the preceding verse the Lord mentions the church. So that this is a continuation of verse 17. Therefore, the meaning of this verse 18 now before us is: that whatever things you the church shall bind on earth shall be (what has been) bound in heaven, and whatever things you the church shall loose on earth shall be (what has been) loosed in heaven.
Here lies a most important principle: God works through the church today; He cannot do whatever He desires to do unless He does it through the church. This is a most sobering principle. Today, God cannot do things by His own Self alone, because there is in existence another free will; without the cooperation of that will God is not able to do anything. The measure of the power of the church today determines the measure of the manifestation of the power of God.]
[This whole matter can be likened to the flow of water in one’s house. Though the water tank of the Water Supply Company is huge, its flow is limited to the diameter of the water pipe in one’s house. If a person wishes to have more flow of water, he will need to enlarge his water pipe. Today the degree of the manifestation of God’s power is governed by the capacity of the church. Just as at one time earlier when God manifested Himself in Christ, His manifestation was as large as the capacity of Christ; so now, God’s manifestation in the church is likewise circumscribed — this time by the capacity of the church. The greater the capacity of the church, the greater the manifestation of God, and the fuller the knowledge of God.]
[How many are the things which God wants to bind and to loose in heaven! Many are the people and things that are contradictory to Him; and all these God expects to be bound. Many also are those people and things that are spiritual, valuable, profitable, sanctified, and being of God; and these He anticipates to be loosed. But just here a problem arises: Will there be men on earth who will first bind what God wants to bind and loose what He intends to loose? God wills to have the earth govern heaven; He desires His church on earth to govern heaven.
This does not imply that God is not all-mighty, for He is indeed the Almighty God. Yet the all-mightiness of God can only be manifested on earth through a channel. We cannot increase God’s power, but we can hinder it. Man is not able to give increase to God’s power, nonetheless he can obstruct it. We cannot ask God to do what He does not want to do, yet we can restrict Him from doing that which He does want to do. Do we really see this? The church has a power by which to manage the power of God. She can either permit God to do what He wants or else prohibit Him from doing it.
Our eyes need to foreglimpse the future. One day God will extend His church to be the New Jerusalem, and at that time His glory will be fully manifested through the church without encountering any difficulty.] Today, God wants the church to loose on earth before He will accomplish on earth what has been loosed in heaven; He wants the church to bind on earth before He will accomplish on earth what has been bound in heaven. Heaven will not initiate things on earth. [Heaven will only follow earth in its working. God will not start first; He in His operation only follows the church. Oh, if this be the case, what a tremendous responsibility the church has!]
In Acts chapters 1 and 2 we see that 120 disciples were praying. Before receiving the Holy Spirit, the disciples were fighting one another for a position in the kingdom while on the way to Jerusalem before the Lord’s crucifixion. After they received the Holy Spirit essentially in John 20 and the instruction from the Lord to stay in Jerusalem to wait for the power from on high — the clothing of the Spirit economically for God’s work — they prayed for ten days. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit came down upon them. The church was formed and the gospel went out; 3,000 people were baptized. By prayer, they loosed the Spirit from heaven and loosed 3,000 souls on earth into God’s kingdom. Praise the Lord for prayer. These saints continued in prayer daily.
In Acts chapters 3 and 4 we see that Peter and John were going to pray. On the way, they preached the gospel, and 5,000 were saved. They prayed again with the church after they were threatened by the Jews, and were told not to preach by the name of Jesus. Their prayer caused an earthquake; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.
In Acts chapter 12 Peter was arrested for the sake of the gospel. The church prayed fervently concerning him. The Lord answered the prayer of the church and released him.
In Acts chapter 13, while the leading ones of the church in Antioch were praying, the Spirit set apart Barnabas and Saul to be apostles to raise up churches. The rest of the leading ones prayed for them and sent them out. You can see that prayer activates the Spirit to send us out to do His work.
In Acts chapter 20 there was a meeting by the sea at Miletus. After Paul had fellowship with the elders from the church in Ephesus, they prayed by the ship Paul was to take. You can see that the church in the early days always prayed to bind and to loose. They did not care for the approval of other people; they only cared for the Lord’s desire.
There are mainly two types of prayer — prayer to have fellowship with God and prayer for God’s work. Prayer to have fellowship with God is for us to contact God and to be filled with God. In this type of prayer we confess and repent of the things He enlightens. Prayer for God’s work is to pray according to His heart’s desire so that He may accomplish His work.
[The significance of the first aspect of prayer is that we use our spirit to contact God, and to absorb God, and to have our entire being brought back to our spirit to have fellowship with Him. When we contact God, absorb God, and have fellowship with God in this way, God has the opportunity to reveal Himself in us and to infuse Himself into us. As God flows Himself into us in this way, our mind, emotion, and will are gradually mingled with God. As a result, God can open His heart’s desire to us, causing us to apprehend His purpose. At the same time, as He is operating and moving within us, He will oftentimes point out our weaknesses, our mistakes, our hindrances, and our difficulties, and then remove them. Therefore, the significance of the first aspect of prayer is to contact God, to touch God, and to let God have the opportunity to mingle with us and to eliminate all our difficulties. Therefore, whenever we come before God to pray, we must look upon this as the first priority. That is to say, whenever we come before the Lord to pray, we should not first petition Him for any other matters. We should rather first turn our entire being back to our spirit and lay our whole being in the light of the Lord’s face, waiting for His operating and moving, enlightening, revealing, anointing, infusing, mingling, filling, and saturating. We should also let Him expose our weaknesses, mistakes, hindrances, and difficulties. If we are willing to confess thoroughly and to allow the Lord to remove all these difficulties, our conscience will be at peace, without any accusation. Our spirit would thus be full of the presence of God. At this point, we can then mention to the Lord the things we want to pray for.]
After having the proper fellowship with God in prayer, a foundation is laid for us to go on to petition God for His work. Because of our proper fellowship, the Lord is able to impart into us His burden for a particular person or matter. At this time we can petition God for them. The Lord, upon hearing our petition, will act from His throne in the heavens to accomplish the work. Sometimes He does not act immediately because we may still have some hidden problems not yet confessed; or His timing requires that we wait. At other times Satan and his fallen angels are resisting God’s work. If we do not see an immediate answer it does not mean that prayer does not work. It means that we need to persist in prayer.
This type of prayer also energizes us by filling us with the Spirit and with boldness to go to open peoples’ eyes with the Word, turn them from darkness to light, and deliver them from the authority of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and the common portion among the saints.
Finally, this type of prayer shows us how to approach our friends, what to say to them, what verses to use, etc. Many times we claim that we do not know what to say, or that we are afraid, or that we cannot get anyone saved. If we pray, God will work within us and within our friends.
We need to pray individually and corporately. In Matthew 6:6 the Lord says that we should pray in our private room. Certain sins should be confessed privately without anyone knowing but the Lord. It is also more convenient to pray by yourself. But even when we pray by ourselves, our standing should always be in the Body. We are praying individually yet not as an individual.
In Matthew chapter 18 the Lord mentioned praying with two or three. In Acts chapters 1 and 2 the 120 disciples were praying together. We also need to pray together. Corporate prayer is stronger and more effective. In fact, the keys of the kingdom were not given to an individual, but to the church corporately. Therefore, the most powerful prayer for God’s work is still the corporate prayer of the church. Some may say, “It is good enough for me to pray by myself. I enjoy the Lord better by myself.’’ It may be true that you can enjoy the Lord by yourself. However, we must ask ourselves, “Is God’s work accomplished through your individual enjoyment’’? You may be enjoying the Lord for yourself and not for the Lord. Our individual enjoyment is for the corporate work of God. Therefore, we must get together to pray for God’s work and to carry out God’s work.
Many times our prayers are ineffective because we are too general; we must pray in a specific way. We may pray, “Lord get many people saved.’’ The Lord does not know which one you desire to get saved. Sometimes we may pray, “Lord get my friend, John, saved.’’ That is better. We can pray more specifically, by saying, “Lord, let me see my friend, John, today at lunch so that I may tell him about the mystery of human life. Lord, prepare him to receive the gospel.’’ This is very specific. You included the person, the time, the message, and what you want the Lord to accomplish. The Lord hears your specific request and accomplishes the work according to your petition.
We also need to persist in our prayer. What do you do, if after your specific prayer you did not meet your friend, John? It seems that the Lord did not answer your prayer. Eph. 6:18 says that we should persevere in prayer. We need to continue to pray. The Lord may reveal to you that you took a pencil from John last year and never repaid him. After you have repented to the Lord and repaid John, the Lord will answer your prayer. If you do not repent, you will waste your time preaching to John, because he will not listen to your message. After your confession and restitution, he will be very open to receive your gospel. So we must persist in prayer until all the barriers are removed in order for the Lord to work.
We all know the verse, 1 Thes. 5:17, “Unceasingly pray.’’ How many of us pray unceasingly? We need set times of prayer everyday so that we will be strong in spirit to pray unceasingly. Daniel told us that he prayed three times a day, kneeling down before God (Dan. 6:10). David prayed in the evening, morning, and at noon (Psa. 55:17). Peter and John went to pray at the hour of prayer (Acts 3:1). These brothers had set times to pray; we also need to set aside time to pray individually and corporately if we are to mean business with the Lord. It is not too much to pray three times by yourself and one time with others on a daily basis. We love Him, and we want Him to accomplish His hearts desire; therefore, we must pray at set times and all the time.
The best way to pray is with the Word (Eph. 6:17-19). We should also have a notebook with us when we pray. Many times we do not know how to pray. Praise the Lord for His Word. We can always read His Word and pray with His Word in order to fellowship with Him. We can also pray according to the burden He gives us through His Word. For example, 1 Tim. 2:4 says, “(God) desires all men to be saved.’’ After reading the verse you may pray, “Lord, you desire all men to be saved; this means all the students in my school are included; this means all my friends are included. O Lord, forgive me for not preaching to them this year. Lord, strengthen my spirit right now and let me preach to my best friend, Mary. Lord, both You and I desire that Mary should be saved.’’ After your prayer, you should write the date and who and what you prayed for in your notebook. If the Lord has not answered your prayer, pray more. After the answer comes, you may give the Lord thanks and write down the date, and how your prayer was answered. You will strengthen your faith by keeping a record. If you become weak in the faith concerning prayer, you can review your record of answered prayer, then you can testify to others that prayer works, and that prayer is the way God works.
