Tag Archives: Prayer

As necessary to our spiritual life as breathing is to our body: our ongoing dialogue with God through the Holy Spirit.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

The prayer of agreement

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I think that one of the most overused verses in the Bible is Matthew 18:20 “For if two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” and one of the most disappointing is the verse immediately preceding it, which promises “If two of you agree on anything you ask, it shall be done for them by my Father in heaven.“

Verse 19 – if two of you agree – is often quoted to encourage people to pray together in pairs or small groups. “God promises to answer!” is the exhortation. Unfortunately, experience often proves otherwise, so the encouragement to meet is without substance. How many times do two or more pray together, yet what we’ve asked for isn’t done for us by our Father in heaven? Yet God’s word is true and His promises are trustworthy, so if our experience does not line up with the Word we must look more deeply into Scripture to see what our experience is missing, not hold up our experience as the truth and dismiss the Word.

The problem here is that the words do what they say on the tin: agree means agree, shall be done means shall be done. There is nothing in the Greek that suggests that they do not mean exactly what they say: there is not even a let out in the tense as there is in Matthew 7:7, where the tense of “ask and it shall be given” actually means ask persistently and it shall be given. The tense of “ask” means just once is enough.

So we gather, we agree, we ask, and yet nothing seems to happen. Why is that? One reason could be that we simply don’t wait long enough for the answer: we give up, and faith (if it ever really existed) evaporates. The promise doesn’t say when it will come, and the Bible has much to say about waiting. In fact “Wait” can seem like one of God’s favourite words. But although I think that can be true at times, I don’t think it is the main point here. I think the reason that a lot of “prayers of agreement” seem to go unanswered is in the first word of verse 20: “for.” Jesus says that the promise of answered prayer is a consequence of two or three being gathered in His name. Only when that is the case does He say He is present in the gathering, “there in the midst of them.“

First of all, what is it to be “gathered together?“ The Greek word means anything from being drawn together like fishes in a net, or assembled as a crowd, to the idea of those who were previously separated becoming one. Given that the heart of Jesus as He prayed in Gethsemane for us “all to be one,” and that the thrust of much of Paul’s teaching is that we are one body in Christ, I think the meaning of “gathering” tends towards the last definition. And “In His name“ does not just mean wearing our church name badges: the Greek word onoma means everything He is; His whole identity. To be in His name means to be the fullness of who we are in Christ. I think that to be gathered in His name means to be one in the spirit, not just in theory, “in faith,” or according to our theology; but experientially, in the lived reality of that moment. If this is the case, and since verse 19 (“when two of you agree…“) is conditional upon verse 20 (“For if two or three of you are gathered…”) the concept of agreement is elevated from being one of verbal and intellectual consensus to a shared understanding in the spirit of a prayer request that we know by revelation is in the Father’s will.

In those conditions we are together in unity according to Jesus’s prayer of John 17:21: “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.”  When our hearts are in agreement like this and there is no doubt or discord, we are already in the Father’s will, so the answer to our prayer is standing right there with us.

I was in a prayer meeting this morning, when a brother mentioned that there was a photo in a ministry prayer letter from a meeting we had both attended that included me a girl that I had been praying with in. I had my hands raised in a posture of worship, and she was on her knees. I guess it made a good photo. We prodded at various things throughout the morning, then just as the meeting was ending (how often has that happened?) The Holy Spirit fell powerfully. At that moment, my friend showed me the prayer letter with the photograph. In hushed voices, we agreed in prayer that the Lord would grant that girl her petition, and we knew immediately that the prayer was answered. Jesus was there “in the midst” according to Matthew 18:20: we could feel His presence.

When Jesus promised that He would send the Holy Spirit He said “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:18) But I think we pray like orphans far too often in our corporate prayer times. Instead of meeting the conditions of “gathering in His name,” we talk to a Father who isn’t there, and then we wonder why He doesn’t appear to be listening.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, The word of God

“Lord, teach us to pray!”

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When they disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, what did He do? The standard answer is “He gave us the Lord’s prayer.”

Indeed He did, but the Lord’s prayer wasn’t all the teaching. The Lord’s prayer in Luke 11 finishes at verse 4 with “Deliver us from the evil one,” but the teaching continues in verse 5:

“And He said to them, “Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him.”

The parable of the Importunate friend follows, concluding with the exhortation from Jesus, transcribed  in the Greek present continuous tense, to “Ask (and keep on asking), and it will be given to you; seek (and keep on seeking) and you will find; knock (and keep on knocking) and the door will be opened to you.” We are not told why we need to persist, but we are told it is important: Jesus repeats the point in the parable of the unjust judge (Luke 18:1-8). We can hazard some guesses as to why: maybe our persistence demonstrates our love, maybe it builds our faith, and God certainly needs to see both our love and our faith when we come to Him in prayer. And sometimes we need to persist because we have an enemy who is interfering with the process, as Daniel discovered (Daniel 10:13-21) when the answer to his prayer was delayed. But persist we must.

There is still more to this than an encouragement to persist in prayer. The friend isn’t asking for bread for himself; he is asking for bread for “a friend who has come to me on his journey.” Jesus is teaching us to persist in our prayers for others who are on their own journey, and whose need has come to our attention. So as well as being persistent, prayer here is about the needs of others. A distinction between the old and new testament models of prayer is that old testament prayer – primarily the Psalms – is about seeking God to meet personal needs; whereas the new testament model is about “us,” whether we are looking at the Lord’s prayer (forgive us, lead us, deliver us, give us) or Paul’s prayers for the churches. Love flows through new testament prayer life. We pray for our friends; our friends pray for us.

Living Bread
Now we come to the prayer itself. The friend asks for bread. As we know from Matthew 4:4 the “bread” that we are to live by is “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The importunate friend asking for bread represents us going to our Friend, Jesus, and asking Him for a word from the mouth of God that will meet the need of our companion. God “watches over His word to perform it.” (Jer 1:12) God’s word is “living and active” – it is imbued with God’s life and energy (the Greek translated as active is energes). We find the same “energy” word when James is writing about the prayer of a righteous man: “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5: 15) Again, prayer here is not asking for bread for self, but for others.

 God says of His word

“It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)

It is the word itself that carries the power to heal, provide, deliver. Jesus cast out demons with a word. The nobleman who came to Jesus for “bread” for his sick son “believed the word that Jesus spoke to him,” (John 4: 50) as did the centurion with the sick servant. (Luke 7: 1-10) Jesus tells us that the words He speaks to us “are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63) And not only do the words – the “bread” – that we receive carry the life and power of God, they also carry the weight of His authority. His word is forever “settled in heaven.” (Ps 119:89) The Strong’s entry for the Hebrew word translated as ”settled” is “to stand, take one’s stand, stand upright, be set (over), establish.” The rule of God’s word over creation, and over the prayer need that we have sought it for, is established forever. Jesus told the nobleman “Go your way, your son shall live.” When we receive a word from the mouth of God that our needy friend can live by, that word has the authority of heaven to bring God’s rule into their situation, and the life and energy to transform it. We have to persist until we receive it.

Stones and Bread.
Jesus finishes His teaching on prayer with a final set of illustrations:

“If a son asks for bread  from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11: 11-13)

The “bread” is always delivered by the Holy Spirit. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:14) We cannot receive a word from God by looking in a Bible index to find an appropriate scripture, unless the Lord sovereignly leads us there. We cannot quote a healing verse that we know and apply it to someone’s sickness unless the Holy Spirit has quickened it to us.  We cannot recite learned verses of God’s provision and expect our bank accounts to suddenly go into credit. We cannot wield the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, other than by the Spirit. It is always “by my Spirit,” never “by might nor by power.” (Zech 4:6)

Our Father in Heaven is longing to give us bread: He doesn’t give stones. And He wants us to ask for bread until we get it: the Greek word aiteō, translated as “ask,” suggests the confident requisitioning of items that the giver expects to release; or “insistent asking without qualms,” as one commentary puts it. James makes it clear that prayers with selfish motives are not answered when he writes: You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:3) But I think there may be many cases of unanswered prayer that come about because we are not waiting for the Spirit to deliver the bread, and we are not persisting in our asking. Instead we pick up the nearest stone, and wonder why it doesn’t bring life.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

The Peach

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“ We do not know what we should pray for as we ought…” (Rom 8:26)

Sometimes our prayers can be like a peach: we look at a situation – whether we are praying for ourselves or for someone else – and we pray. We see the peach, we take a bite, and we wait for the Lord’s answer. Nothing changes. We pray again, taking another bite. Third bite: ask and keep on asking; knock and keep on knocking. But the door still doesn’t open to us. We keep praying, trusting God’s faithfulness, until we have devoured all the peach. God still hasn’t answered, and we are left holding a damp red peach stone. So we stop praying, believing that our prayers weren’t in God’s will, and we throw away the peach stone.

But what we’ve done is throw away the answer to our prayers. We have prayed for what we have seen – the flesh of the peach- but that doesn’t mean we have prayed for what God sees. In fact Isaiah tells us:

“He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes,
Nor decide by the hearing of His ears”. (Isaiah 11: 3)

The starting place for God’s creative acts is not in what is seen, but what is unseen:

“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” (Heb 11:3)

The life that the peach carries is not in the flesh, and not even in the stone: it is in the kernel that is hidden inside the stone. Paul writes:

“I shall pray with my spirit, and I shall pray also with my understanding.” (1 Cor 14:15)

The New Living Translation renders this as “I will pray in the spirit, and I will also pray in words I understand,” which I  think is how it is generally understood. The Greek word used for understanding is “nous” – the word for human intellect and reason. In fact we use it in English colloquially, in phrases like – “anyone with a bit of nous can see that…”  But I think we can see it another way as well. I think it could also mean that we look at a situation and pray about it with our “nous,” but we also pray in the Spirit about the same situation. The two are connected.  In other words, we understand that, for example, the marriage of a certain couple in leadership is in trouble, so we start to pray about it according to what we know and can see, which is praying about it with our understanding; but when we start to pray in the Spirit we receive revelation about how God wants us to pray, our understanding is then enlightened, and we are then praying according to the will of God:

“The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” (Rom 8: 26-27)

Let’s remember that when we have prayed through all that we can see, including all the scriptures that we understand to be relevant to the need, we may have devoured the flesh with our understanding, but that is just the beginning of the prayer: it is only by the Holy Spirit that we see the kernel hidden inside the stone, where God’s answer is waiting to bring forth Life.

Living by Faith, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

The Prayer of Faith

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“The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5:16)

When the heavens are made of brass

I often wonder, as I’m sure you do, why so many prayers just don’t seem to be answered. We can, and do, find all sorts of ways to justify the lack of change in our circumstances, or in the circumstances of those we prayed for even when we spent a long time on our knees (or however, you pray – I hardly ever actually get onto my knees . Perhaps I should do more often…) But the fact is it often doesn’t appear that heaven is manifesting on earth, or the Kingdom of God is coming  as a result of our prayers. Sometimes it is a matter of timing, and there are many powerful testimonies of long period of time elapsing before the prayer and the answer: years, and even decades. God dwells outside of time, and we know that His timing is always perfect, and our timing very often leads to disappointment and frustration. And sometimes there’s a battle to be fought in the heavenlies, such as we see at work in the book of Daniel and the opposition of the “Prince of Persia“ to Daniel’s prayers being answered. These are not the situations I am talking about. And I’m not talking about the times when we console ourselves with the thought that the answer is “No,” or that it comes gradually. I am referring to those specific needs that arise within a specified timeframe, outside of which they cease to exist, and yet where God does not appear to do anything. I’m talking about the times when the heavens seem to be “made of brass.“

Yet we know they aren’t, we know our God of Love does not ignore his children, and we know that He is faithful. As Smith Wigglesworth famously put it, our God loves to answer our prayers more than we love to ask. James 5: 16 tells us “the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.“ If this is what the Bible says, it must be true. So if our prayers don’t seem to avail anything (let alone much) it must be either because they aren’t effective and fervent, or because we aren’t righteous. And since we are “the righteousness of God in Christ,” (2 Cor 5:21) that can’t be the issue; so it has to be to do with whether or not our prayers are effective and fervent.

The Electric Current

Actually it all comes down to one word, because the phrase “effective fervent” (This is the new King James translation: NIV says “powerful and effective.”) is only one word in Greek, which is energeo, meaning operative, putting forth power. Our word energy – think of an electric current – obviously comes from it. If we want to know why some of our prayers don’t “avail much,“ I think we need to ask ourselves what it means for a prayer to have energeo.

We can get some light on this by seeing where else it’s used. In Ephesians 4:16, Paul says that the body (the Church) grows in Christ according to the “effective working“ by which every part does it share. It’s the same word: “effective working” is what enables all the joints in the body to work together and grow in love.  And here’s what struck me: energeo is what enables every part – that is each member of the body – to do its share. The word for share  is metros. Effective working is something that is meted out to each one of us, so that we can function in the power of the Spirit and the life of Christ can flow in His body. What do we all have a share (metros) of?  

 Paul writes: “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.” (Romans 12:3. My underlining.)

What God measures out to us is faith. I think that this is the key to energeo. A prayer isn’t “fervent and effective” because we have spent hours in crying out to God fervently, or because we have used words that we think are effective because other people have used them effectively: a prayer has energeo when we know that we know that God has given us the answer. Not because of our theology, and not even because it’s written in the Bible, but because He has told us personally. We might still have to cry out for hours to see that answer manifest, but we cry out in faith because the powers of darkness may need to be cleared out of the way, not in desperation because we think we need to get God’s attention. The full context of  James 5:16 is this:

“Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5: 14-16)

The effective fervent prayer is the prayer of faith. Churches that apply James 5: 14-16 to prayer for healing tend to focus on the oil and the eldership, and hope that these two will carry the faith. But 2 out of 3 won’t work. In the time of James, the elders of a church will have been people who knew what it was to pray with energeo, and so it was safe to assume that their prayers would be answered, and the body of Christ built up in love (Ephesians 4:16) as a result. Unfortunately that is not necessarily the case today. Without energeo, the elders and the oil avail nothing.

Seeing and Hearing

We all know Hebrews 11:1 “ Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The evidence of things that are seen is what our eyes have witnessed. When we say “I saw it with my own eyes,” it is not my eyes or the thing that I saw which are the evidence, but the fact that I saw it. My sense of that reality tells me and tells others that it exists. In the same way, faith is the sense by which our spirit experiences the unseen dimension. We also know that “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of God.”  (Rom 10:17) How do we hear the word of God? From the Good Shepherd, whose voice we hear, and whom we have decided to follow. (John 10:27) We can’t follow Him, unless we’re close to Him, so being close to Him must be our first priority. And when we are close to Him our sense of faith is sharpened, and it is in His proximity that we can hear His voice, sometimes through and always agreeing with the word of God.  Biblical hope is not a wish; it’s a destination. When we hear Him speak and our spiritual sense of faith perceives the substance of the answered prayer that we are hoping for, we have that Mark 11:22  mover of  mountains; the faith of God.

“So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. “For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.” (Mark 11:22-23. The Greek translated “in God” is actually the genitive case “of God.”)

Faith is always a gift of God: we can’t draw it out of our own thinking, our own understanding. Jesus tells us that faith as a grain of mustard seed is enough to uproot and move a tree. The Bible is a whole sack full of seeds in lots of different packets – seeds for healing, seeds for provision, for victory and so on. I believe we can only see which seeds to sow when the Holy Spirit shows us the life that they contain. We need to see the mustard tree in the Spirit and not just read about it on the packet, and that can only come from God, and not by leaning on our understanding – even if it’s our understanding of the Bible. When God has shown us the tree inside the seed and we have evidence of it with our spiritual sense of faith, that is the faith of God that Jesus tells us will move mountains.

So it is in that place of mustard seed faith, granted by the Holy Spirit through a word from the Shepherd, that we can pray the effective fervent prayers that avail much. We are so often like people going into a dark room and groping around to we find the light switch. There can be a lot of hidden wires carrying electricity (energeo) in the cavity of a wall, but there is only one switch that activates their power. The power is there: it’s been given to us. The entire circuit is the gift of God’s grace, and Jesus flipped the mains to a permanent “ON” at Calvary. But in the dark rooms where we can find ourselves we need to learn to seek and find the switches, instead of just tapping at the blank wall blindly and wondering why the light doesn’t come on.

Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith

Faith comes from hearing…

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Then I said, “Behold, I come;
In the scroll of the book it is written of me.
I delight to do Your will, O my God,
And Your law is within my heart.” (Psalm 40: 7-8)

How often do we step out of our daily routine to draw aside with God, and then bump into a word that speaks directly into a situation that we are praying about, in a portion of Scripture that we read that very day? What never ceases to astound me as how that word has been waiting for this moment. I want to invite you to put on sunglasses for a moment and stare with me into the blazing glory of the substance of the Word of God.

The psalmist writes that Gods word is “settled in heaven.” (Psalm 119:89) The Hebrew word for settled means established, standing firm. This is the word that created the universe, and that sustains “all things;” (Heb 1:3) it is the Word that was in the beginning before becoming flesh. (John 1:14) Jesus says that His words will remain even though Heaven and Earth pass away (Luke 21:33). He tells us that His words are “Spirit and they are life.” He does not say that they are from the Spirit or that they bring life; He says that they are spirit and they are life. God’s word is living and active. It seems that the substance of the word is actually part of the substance of God himself. John 1:1 affirms this, because the gospel writer tells us clearly that “the word was God.” God’s words do not just come from Him; they are part of Him.


Speaking through David by the Holy Spirit, Jesus says (Psalm 40 verses 7 to 8) “Behold I come, it is written about me in the scroll of your book. I delight to do Your will Oh Lord.“ He made it clear to the scribes and Pharisees that the law and the prophets revealed Him: He was written there long before He came in the flesh. We find many messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, but I think the clearest of them all is actually Psalm 22, where we find not only Christ’s experience of the crucifixion described in great detail, but also His birth and life (vs 9-10), His resurrection (v 21), the Church age (v 22) and His coming Glory (vs 27-29) as well.

The Psalm famously starts with Jesus’s cry from the cross: “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?“ And it tells how He can count all his bones, how He is “poured out like water“ and “all His bones are out of joint“, how His hands and feet have been pierced. how His enemies cost lots of His garments, how He is mocked and taunted. (vs. 12-18) Then, like a blazing comet in a dark sky, comes a single sentence set on its own: “you have answered me.“ (v 21)

Following this, we see in quick succession the establishment of the church “my praise should be of You in the great assembly“ (v 22), and the fulfilment of the kingdom promises of justice and mercy: “I will pay my veins before those who fear him. The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him will praise the Lord.“ (v 26) The final declarations of this wonderful psalm focus on the end time promise that “all the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For the kingdom is the Lord’s and He rules over the nations. (Verses 27 to 28)

When Jesus came to do the Father’s will, these words were already settled in Heaven and written about Him in the scroll of the book. When He cries out “My God My God why have You forsaken Me?” He is not only declaring God’s judgement of and turning away from the sin of all mankind, He is also connecting with the eternal word of His purpose and His posterity that is settled in the scroll of Heaven. In the extremes of the greatest anguish known to man, the Son of God is trusting the Father because He had already declared that He was, and that  His prayers had been answered, 1000 years beforehand. It was settled in heaven.

As Jesus so powerfully and finally demonstrated from the point of the cross, when God’s word comes alive in our circumstances it comes with all the power of Heaven. Our lives too are written in the scroll of God’s book, as we know from Ephesians 2:10 that talks of the works prepared for us beforehand “that we might walk in them.” When we pray and speak words from that book we too are taking hold of words that are “settled in heaven,“ and we are bringing something of the very substance of the spiritual dimension into space and time. We know that we are praying prayers that will be answered, because the answer is there already, just as it was for Jesus (verse 21: “You have answered me.“)

We read in Romans 10: 17  that “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.“ When we hear a word spoken by the Holy Spirit, whether it is a word of scripture or a word spoken directly to our hearts, we know it will be fulfilled because God’s word never returns to him void ( Isaiah 55:11) God hasn’t only given the word that is spoken, He is also actually in its very substance in order to fulfil it. Our challenge as disciples of Jesus is to always try to make sure that the words we are speaking and the prayers that we are praying are words that are settled in Heaven. Jesus said more than once: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.“ (E.g. Matt 11:15) Peter says that we are “born again of the incorruptible word of God, ”(1 Pe 1:23) and I believe that these “Ears to hear” are the  “hearing” that comes by the word: it is ours at the new birth, and ours to refine as we mature in Christ. It is only this “hearing,” these spiritual ears, that is able to hear heavenly words.

We know that Spiritual things are spiritually discerned; (1 Cor 2:14), and also that “the flesh profits nothing.” (John 6:63) If we read words from Heaven that are written in the Bible with our ears of flesh, they cannot impart faith: we cannot receive the life that is in them, and the consequence will be disappointment.  We will profit nothing. We know that Heaven’s answer will always come from Heaven, but we can so easily forget that our prayers, like the prayers of Jesus on the cross that we read in Psalm 22, must also come from Heaven if they are going to bring Resurrection life into situations. These are prayers of mustard-seed faith; this, as well as praying in tongues, is praying in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us to pray (Romans 8:26). If we want to see more prayers answered, we must always remember to ask Him for His help.

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Walking in the Spirit

The Leaven of the New Creation

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The DNA of the Kingdom of God

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.” (Gal 5:6)

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.” (Gal 6:15)

When we preach Christ, we preach the new creation. When we receive Him, it is the New Creation that we step into. Jesus is King of the New Creation: in His Kingdom, all things are made new. On his first missionary journey, Paul had preached the gospel to the Galatians, and now the “Judaizers” were trying to lead them away from the Life of the Spirit and back under the law. This was the first of Paul’s epistles, and his message rings clear: the life that is ours in Christ comes by the Spirit, and not by the law. Paul stresses that there is just one characteristic, ‘the only thing that avails,’ in the New Creation, and that is faith working through love. This is the hallmark of their new life in Christ. “Faith working through love” is the very DNA of the Kingdom of God.

In the shortest parable that He gave, Jesus said:  “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.” (Matt 13:33) In the Kingdom of God, the New Man is charged with the same command as was the first Adam: “Go forth and multiply.” We are instructed to go into all the world and make disciples, multiplying this Kingdom that we are part of, as disciples make disciples and pass on the DNA of the new creation until, like the stone that destroys the kingdoms of the world, it becomes “a great mountain and filled the whole Earth” (Daniel 2: 35). The Kingdom of God is like yeast, because yeast multiplies. The yeast that multiplies – this DNA of the Kingdom – is faith working through love.

The writer to the Hebrews tells us that “The word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) The book where I think we can see the Word of God dividing between soul and spirit more than anywhere else in the New Testament is the letter of James, the brother of Jesus and one of the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church. James “divides” heavenly and earthly wisdom, wealth and poverty, trials and perseverance, sensual and spiritual prayer requests, empty faith and fruitful faith, the untamed tongue and “perfect” speech, pride and humility, judgement and grace. He lays out clearly the blueprint of the Kingdom of God, where faith flourishes in the context of a loving, Christ-centred lifestyle, and he succinctly wraps it up in a single verse: “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5:16) The “works” of faith that are central to James’s message (James 2:18) are both the supernatural results of Elijah-style prayer that this verse refers to, and the grace-filled lifestyle of the “righteous man” who prays them – faith at work in a setting of love.

James makes it clear that a fruitful Christian life requires full commitment to the Kingdom of God, because a “double-minded man” is “unstable in all his ways” and will “receive nothing from the Lord.” (James 1:8). His epistle progresses from portraying various characteristics of the “carnal Christian” whose faith is fruitless, to the picture of Elijah, who “was a man with a nature like ours” and whose faith both stopped and started the rain. In the new creation, where faith works through love, the prayer of faith raises up the sick person, the hungry are fed, and the needs of “widows and orphans” are met.  Elijah is praying in faith, and people are being loved.

The goal of discipleship, as expressed by Paul to Timothy, is “that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” This is a recurring theme in the New Testament, revisited from different angles. Paul prays that the Ephesians will be “filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:19). James exhorts his readers to “let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1:4) Paul prays that the Corinthians “may be made complete” (2 Cor 13:9), and his final exhortation to them is, again, “Finally, brethren, farewell. Become complete…” (2 Cor 13:11) He tells the Colossians that “Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.” (Col 4:12) The writer to the Hebrews prays that his readers “may be made complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. ”

Finally, Jesus tells us “therefore be perfect, just as your father in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48). Throughout the epistles, the Holy Spirit takes these words of Jesus and makes them known to us (John 16:14) so that we can see the goal of His discipleship programme. If the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, then faith working through love should be multiplying “perfect”, “complete” believers in our churches, as double-minded, carnal, babes in Christ learn to “crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal 5:24)

This is the trajectory of discipleship: the babe in Christ who walks after the flesh becomes complete, like Elijah, and walks after the Spirit, as the DNA of the Kingdom multiplies in his or her heart. It is the bottom line of what it means to make disciples. It is what God will be seeking to restore in the church when He pours our His Spirit in the coming revival. He has been seeking it since Pentecost.

Paul said to Timothy: “Those things you heard from me, commit to faithful men who are able to teach others also.” (2 Tim 2:2.) In one verse, we see the leaven of the Kingdom multiplying three times: from Paul to Timothy; from Timothy to “faithful men,” and from those faithful men to “others also.” I see three questions arising out of this scripture:

  1. Are we training up “Timothys?”
  2. If we are, are they hearing from us the same things as Timothy heard from Paul?  
  3. Does our church model promote multiplication of that leaven as far as the “others also,” who will in turn eventually be reaching Timothys of their own?

The new wine is coming, so that as we drink of it the double-minded babe can become, like Timothy, the complete Elijah. He has poured it out many times before, and every time it has stayed around for a little while, then the wineskin has broken and the wine has drained away. If the next revival is going to be different, it won’t be the wine that has changed; it will be because the wineskins don’t break.

We’ve all had a chance over the last year to inspect our wineskins. Have we got the new ones ready? Or are we going to ask God, yet again, to pour the new wine into our old wineskins? Because we know what will happen if we do.

Be prepared; hold on., Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

The Bus Stop

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A prophetic word of encouragement

When we wait at a bus stop, we know that a bus will be coming, although we don’t always know when. The other night, I felt the Lord just say “bus stop” to me. I believe this is His word to us:

“You are at a bus stop, waiting for my bus to arrive. Nothing happens at a bus stop, the surroundings aren’t particularly exciting or beautiful, and it could be that you are standing on your own. You may be cold and wet, but you stay at the bus stop because you know the bus will be coming. You aren’t hoping that it might come; you know that it will come, so you stay where you are in full expectation of its arrival. And however cold and wet you are, however tired you might feel because you have been standing there for a long time, you know that the bus is coming, and when it arrives it will be warm and dry and you will be able to sit down. You don’t need to walk any further, because the bus will take you on to your destination.

My bus is on the way. The revival that you have been praying for is on its way. Don’t worry about your ticket: it is booked. And when the bus arrives you will find it full of people who are on the same journey, although they have come from different places. You will know some of them; some you will remember from a while back, and others will be strangers. But you will all share the joy and excitement of the journey, and soon you will all be friends. You may wonder where the bus is going because it will be taking you to places that you didn’t expect, but don’t worry because I will be driving the bus myself. There will be other stops to pick up more people, but don’t be tempted to get off before I say we have arrived. The tempter will try and draw you away, saying “This is your stop,” but it will be a lie, because when we arrive at the destination I have planned for you, everybody will leave the bus as one, perfect in one.

So carry on praying and waiting. Don’t give up or be drawn away. The bus is coming.”

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Sunday 13th Sept: discipleship

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It’s great to have a “live stream” of the prophetic in our Sunday meetings again, even though we aren’t physically together. As I write this, I am reminded of Paul’s words to the Corinthians ; “For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit.” (1 Cor 5:3). We use the phrase “with you in spirit” a lot, so much so that it has basically lost its meaning. I think it’s time that we rediscovered the spiritual power of these words. Our born again spirits really are in the same place, seated in Heavenly places in Christ.

There were two prophetic words this morning.

Jake had the following scripture
“Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:13)

He felt the Lord saying “There is a battle coming, but I want you to know that I have given you everything you need to be more than conquerors, so that you will be standing strong at the end.”

The Lord spoke to me during the worship.
Anne and I were sitting on the sofa watching the meeting on my laptop. I was quite happy; the laptop was adequate for the job. But as we were watching, Anne was sorting out the connection between the wi-fi and the TV, so that we could enjoy the meeting on a bigger screen and with better volume. As she was putting in the password, I felt the Lord say to me: “Are you content with just the laptop, or do you want more?”

God want us to press in for the big screen. He wants us to move onto a new level in our relationship with Him, and not to be content with what we have at the moment.  His desire is for us to have Him on that big fixed screen and stay connected all the time, not to fold up our laptops and switch them off when we feel like it.

Discipleship is not a part-time activity. As Rob’s message that followed emphasised, it is an all-in, full time call.

Be prepared; hold on., Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

We Have the Fire

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“And when the servant of the man of God arose early and went out, there was an army, surrounding the city with horses and chariots. And his servant said to him, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” So he answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, and said, “LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (2 Kings : 15-17)

In recent times there has been an emphasis in the prophetic on an increase in the intensity of the heavenly battle that we are engaged in. There have been words about God sending angels to earth, and His heavenly army being drawn up in battle array. But where is this battle taking place?

The battle is taking place all around us: not just in our churches, but in our private lives, in our family lives, and in our schools and workplaces. In some contexts it is also taking place visibly in the geopolitical sphere: in Israel, now as always; and where ever political and religious systems or legislative acts are standing in opposition to the Kingdom of our God and His Christ. The growing civil unrest in the USA is also largely an expression of the clash between liberal humanistic values and the values of the Conservative Christian foundation of the nation.

Individually, we can expect to face more and stronger temptations, and more frustration and opposition (especially in areas of ministry) as the devil unleashes his forces against the people of God. Where they are fissures and cracks in relationships the enemy will seek to drive in a wedge and force people apart. He will intensify his attack on Christian marriages and Christian families. Where we are neglecting to adhere to Romans 12: 1-2 and we are not “presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice” as our “reasonable service” to the Lord, the enemy will exploit all the weaknesses of our carnality to do as much damage as he can. The intensified battle over our own lives will often come down to the ongoing war between the flesh and the spirit – (Romans 6:19, Galatians 5:17, James 4: 1 1 Peter 2: 11), so we need to take seriously Peter’s warning to ”Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

Now is the time to stay closer than ever to the commander of our army, and to tune our ears even more finely to His voice. Jesus reminds us in John 10:27 that we, His sheep, do hear His voice; but very often we are listening to too many other voices as well, so His quiet whisper is drowned out.  Now is the time to ask the Lord, Just as Elisha did, to open our spiritual eyes so we can discern the spiritual forces around us: not just the forces of darkness, but the angelic forces of the Kingdom of God whose work it is to minister to the Saints (Hebrews 1: 7). We need to remember that we are not alone in any situation: that there is a spiritual dimension all around us that is peopled with beings who are both against us and for us. We need to pray at all times, not just for ourselves but for one another, and especially for those in church leadership; and those of us with the gift of tongues need to spend more time than ever praying in our spiritual language, because it is given to us for our edification.

But, as Paul says, “we are not ignorant of his schemes” (2 Cor 2:11), and the truth is that He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world, and that those who are for us are greater than those that are against us. The enemy may have his “horses and chariots” arrayed against us, but against them are “horses and chariots of fire.” Although the battle may rage, the war is already won, and we can stand firm in the hope of partaking in the fruits of that victory, whether it’s in this life or the eternity that Jesus has won for us. “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. (Romans 8:37)

Jesus told us that the “violent” take the Kingdom of Heaven ”by force”.  There is a land to take, but we are going to have to fight for it. The battle is on. But we have the fire; and the Lord says to us today what He said to His old covenant people through Moses and Joshua: “Be strong and very courageous, for I am with you.”

And if God is for us, who can be against us?

Living by Faith

Ask, and it shall be given.

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At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask! What shall I give you?” (1 Kings 3:5)

We all know how Solomon responded to this. Even if you have never read any of the Bible you will have heard of the wisdom of that God gave to Solomon because it is what he asked for, and you will have heard of the great wealth and power that God also gave him because he didn’t ask for them. I sometimes used to wish that God would appear to me like that, and I would think about what my answer would be if He did, and all the amazing things He would give me that I hadn’t asked for. Have you?

The point is: God has said the same thing to us. Jesus said “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened… If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him” (Matt 7:7-8, 11)

Luke renders this slightly differently. He says (Luke 11:13)”… how much more will your Father who is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him”

Paul writes (Romans 8:32) “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”

This is not God appearing to us in a dream in a specific time and place; these are words that are written in Heaven for every child of God for all time, for us to appropriate by faith and make our own. The only question is: what is God exhorting us to ask for? Is it “good things,” “all things,” or “the Holy Spirit?” We need to know what to ask for.

I understand it like this. “Good things” have to be God’s things. Since Jesus said that only God is good (Luke 18:19), this has to mean that Jesus would not call anything “good” that does not come from Heaven, where God dwells. Everything that is good exists in the realm of the Spirit. As James 1:17 tells us: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights.” Whatever we receive from the Father of lights comes to us through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, so when the Bible says that God will “Give the Holy Spirit” to those who come to the Father with requests, I think it simply means something like: “the entire storehouse of Heaven is available through Him; what exactly are you looking for?”

Scripture shows that there is no doubt that Jesus wants us to ask for “good gifts” from the Father:

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. (Matt 18:19)

And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” (Matt 21:22)

 “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24)

“Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:13)

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7)

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” (John 15:16)

“and whatever we ask we receive from him, becausewe keep his commandmentsand do what pleases him.” (1 John 3:22)

“And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” (1 John 5: 14-15)

There are clearly some conditions; nevertheless that is a lot of encouragement to ask! God is emphatic about it. When we pray in the name of Jesus and our prayers are answered, “the Father is glorified in the Son.” Jesus tells us that it is “The Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom.”  (Luke 12:32) Our call as disciples is to carry on the work of the Master and see His kingdom come. We can’t build the Kingdom of God for Jesus: He has to do it Himself, by His Spirit; and He won’t do it unless we ask Him. He appointed us to bear fruit by asking the Father to give us the Kingdom. In the Spirit it is all ours already, as we are seated in heavenly places with Jesus the King. But on Earth we need to pray it into being: every time a prayer is answered we bear lasting fruit, the Father and the Son are glorified, and that is another bit of the Kingdom that has come on Earth as it is in Heaven.

So what are the conditions? Really, they can be summed up in two statements: we have to ask in faith, actually believing that we have received what we have asked for; and we have to be walking in His will. If there is sin or disobedience in our lives the heavens will be brass. If God has told you to do something, do it. You’ll just be walking through cobwebs in your spiritual life until you do. James also gives us a useful clue: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4: 3) If our motivation is worldly or carnal, we are wasting our time. Such things do not come into the domain of “good gifts,” however good we may think they are.

What if we feel that we have fulfilled the conditions, we are praying in the Spirit and not in the flesh, we are seeking God’s kingdom and not the fulfilment of our own desires, and we are still not seeing answers? There may be reasons, often to do with the timing of other situations in the bigger picture, that only God knows about; but there is one common one that we can do something about ourselves, and it’s this: we are giving up too easily, and are not being fervent enough. We have to remember that we are in a battle. There is opposition. Daniel waited 21 days for the answers he was seeking while a battle with the demon prince of Persia was being played out in the spirit realm. Maybe we need to fast. Maybe we’re just not on our knees for long enough. Maybe we should actually try getting onto our knees instead of praying on the sofa. Maybe we just need to ask God what the problem is. But as Smith Wigglesworth put it, the fact is that God wants to answer far more that we want to ask.

When Jesus posed the unsettling question “Will the Son of Man find faith on the earth when He returns?” (Luke 18:8) it is preceded by the story of the unjust judge and the persistent widow. It would seem that faith, in this context, is knowing that God will eventually answer if we just keep banging on the door. The tense of the verbs in the “Ask, seek and knock” verse is the present continuous: ask and keep on asking; seek and keep on seeking; knock and keep on knocking. . When Bible teacher Andrew Wommack held prayer meetings at the start of his ministry they used to keep praying, sometimes through the night and often doing battle with the enemy, until they saw breakthrough; because they believed that God had the “good and perfect gift” for them. It’s the fervent effective prayer of a righteous man that avails much. (James 5:16).

A final point. David just asked for one thing:

One thing I have desired of the LORD,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the LORD
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the LORD,
And to inquire in His temple. (Psalm 27:4)

I think Jesus may have been alluding to this when He said (Luke 10:42) “But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” Jesus made it clear throughout His teachings that if we seek first the Kingdom of God, “all these things” – the things that “the pagans” ask for, from the world and the flesh – will be given to us. If we give to others, God will give to us. Whatever we “forsake” on earth for the Kingdom’s sake will be given back to us, multiplied a hundredfold. (With persecutions!) This is not to say that God doesn’t care about our material needs. He does, and we can remind Him of His promise that “God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. …” (Phil 4:19). In fact we are explicitly taught to ask for our daily bread, and not just to assume it will be on the table. By asking for it, we are recognising that everything we have comes from Him: it’s an acknowledgement of His provision, and as such can even be considered part of our worship.

To put all this together, I suggest the following:

1) Like David, we hunger above all for God’s presence. Apart from anything else, this is the only place where real faith is stirred.

2) We recognise that God is our provider, we trust Him to supply our needs and we remind Him of His promises over our lives. I put this before the next point because it means what we can take our personal “stuff” to the cross and leave it there, while we get on with the business of number 3 below.

3) We get on our knees, physically or metaphorically, and realise that God is saying the same to us as He said to Solomon all those years ago.

So what are we asking for? Is it a good and perfect gift that will increase the Kingdom of God on the earth? Do we really believe it is there for us? Are we in a right place with God, or does something need dealing with so that we ourselves are walking in His Kingdom ways? Is our priority, above all else, to know the presence of God? If the answer to all of these is yes, then we keep asking until it “comes down from the Father of lights.” And if it’s taking its time, that may simply be because we are in a battle, and we need to “endure to the end.”

God is saying to us all, “Ask! What shall I give you?” And we aren’t dreaming.