God needs Man to Exercise his Spirit and his Will to Pray according to God’s Will

Our service to God as priests is by prayer, and this prayer needs to be according to His heart and will; to have such a prayer, we need to allow the Spirit to mingle our desires with His desires, lead our thoughts into His thoughts, and imprint His desires and thoughts into us so that we may pray according to God’s will.

If we see others falling into temptation or sinning, we should simply pray for them, ask the Lord to grow in them, and minister life to them. Our service to God and to the saints is our prayer.

We serve God mainly by coming to Him with an exercised spirit and praying to Him, and this prayer has to be according to His will; the way to pray according to God’s will and have our prayers answered is by coming to His word, praying over His word, and echoing back to God what He speaks in His word.

We need to choose to align our will with God’s will by coming to Him in His word with much musing, meditation, prayer, and singing, so that we may be infused with God, mingled with God, and fully joined to Him to express and echo His will back to Him in prayer for His good pleasure.

Too many of our prayers are just for ourself, for our needs, for our family, and for the things related to us; we need to be the genuine men of prayer who have our desires fully blended into God’s desires so that God’s desires would be imprinted into us and our heart is a duplication of the Lord’s heart.

The prayers we utter from ourselves for our needs to satisfy our own lust have no spiritual value; they may be answered by God, but we will become weak before His eyes and unpleasing to Him, and His judgement may also ensue.

Oh Lord Jesus! May we realize that only the prayers that are initiated by God and echo what He has initiated have any spiritual value, and may we learn to pray this kind of prayer!

Praying by Allowing the Spirit to Imprint His Desires and Thoughts into us

When we come to the Lord in prayer, we need to allow the Spirit to mingle our desires with His desires; we need to let the Spirit lead our thoughts into His thoughts by being soaked and saturated with the word of God, and we will have His desires and thoughts imprinted into us.

Then, the prayers that we will utter to God will be the expression of His inward desires, and such prayers are precious, weighty, and valuable to Him, while at the same time they will cause Satan to suffer loss (Rom. 8:26-27; Phil. 4:6; Col. 4:2, 12; Mark 9:28-29; Eph. 6:10-20).

We need to offer God prayers with thanksgiving (Phil. 4:6; Col. 4:2), offering Christ as our thanksgiving offering.

…because they were lacking in affection, they would not offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving to God. Thus, the psalmist, speaking for God, indicated that what God wants is not the burnt offering but the thanksgiving offering. We can offer certain offerings without being touched in our hearts, but when we are thankful to God and offer to Him a prayer of thanksgiving, our hearts are deeply touched and we are filled with affection and tender feeling toward God. This is the kind of offering God desires. Psa. 50:14, footnote 1, Recovery Version Bible

When we pray, we acknowledge that we are nothing and can do nothing; prayer is the real denial of the self. When we pray, we declare, No longer I but Christ! Even such a short prayer as, Oh Lord Jesus! indicates that it is no longer I but Christ.

We need to offer God all kinds of prayer and pray-reading, mingling our feelings with the Word of God and conversing with Him in a real intimate way, so that His desires and thoughts would be imprinted into us. Then, we need to offer prayers and petitions concerning all the saints.

When we open to the Lord to be mingled with Him and have His thoughts imprinted into us, our prayers will not be initiated by ourselves but from God; the Holy Spirit conveys to us the will of God, and we will pray prayers that are after God’s heart.

The starting point of our prayer should be God’s will; as we are transmitting and responding to God’s will, God has our consent and cooperation to do what He wants to do. We need to allow the Spirit of God to lead us into His heart by spending time with the Lord; our heart needs to be calm and undisturbed, and our thoughts need to be quiet.

We may bring some of the things we encounter to God, or we may simply wait on Him and listen to Him; when we wait on the Lord, prayerfully reading His word, He will bring something or someone to our attention, and we will simply utter the prayer He needs.

When we bring our desires and thoughts to God, He will imprint His desires and thoughts into us to the extent that we desire and think the same way that He does; the prayers that issue out of such a mingling and imprinting are the most precious and weighty before God.

Lord Jesus, we come to You in Your word with an open heart. We allow You to imprint Your desires and thoughts into us. Mingle Your desires with our desires. Lead out thoughts into Your thoughts. Imprint Your desires and thoughts into us, so that the prayers we utter would be mingled with your inward desires and thus be weighty and valuable to You, causing Satan to suffer loss! Lord, touch our heart with Your heart, fill our thoughts with Your thoughts, and lead our will into Your will as we pray-read Your word and open to You in prayer to echo Your will!

God needs Man to Exercise his Spirit and his Will to Pray according to God’s Will

Brothers and sisters, when we come to God and His desires are imprinted in us, these desires will become our breath and groaning. Prayers that are precious and weighty are those that are based on inward desires….If God is grieved and sorrowful over man’s condition of death, the same grief and sorrow will be imprinted in us, and we will have a desire to see man delivered from death. There will be a groaning within that will be turned into prayer. If God is grieved and anxious over His children’s failures and this is imprinted in us, we will also have a desire to see that none of His children fall into sin or darkness. We will utter such prayers and supplications from within; we will confess our sins and ask for His forgiveness and cleansing of His children. (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 38, p. 455)

God needs us, His people, to exercise our spirit with our resurrected will in order to pray according to God’s will; He want us to pray that His will would be done on earth, that is, that Christ would be manifested and enjoyed by us, the Body life would be practiced among us, and the Body of Christ would be built up through us. God’s divine will is that we enjoy Christ, practice the Body life, and build up the Body of Christ.

As seen in Heb. 10:5-10, God’s divine will is that Christ would be manifested to replace all the Old Testament offerings with Himself for us to enjoy Him.

The Lord Jesus came to replace all the sacrifices and offerings and become the unique New Testament sacrifice; we need to take Him, offer Him to God, and enjoy Him with God and before God as the reality of all the Old Testament types and figures.

As seen in Rom. 12:1-2, the good and perfect will of God is for us to practice the Body life; we need to be transformed by the renewing of the mind to prove what the will of God is – the Body life.

Furthermore, as seen in Ephesians, the will of God is for the Body of Christ to be built up; for this, we need to be strengthened into our inner man so that Christ would make His home in our heart and, together with all the saints, we would build up the Body (see Eph. 1:4-6, 9, 11, 22b-23; 3:16-19; 4:16).

We need to have a fresh love for the Lord Jesus, giving Him the first place in all things, so that we may built up the Body of Christ, and we need to allow the divine power to operate in us to blast us out of ourselves and into God Himself! Amen!

We have to pray according to God’s will and His will for the fulfillment of His economy; then, we have the assurance that we have received what we have asked for (Mark 11:22-26).

If we ask the Lord for the things that satisfy our desire, we may not get them, but if we are the right persons, those absolutely one with God, we will ask things according to His heart, and we have the assurance that we have received what we have asked for.

When we are one with God, having Him as our faith, we will pray according to His will for His economy, and we have the assurance that we will receive what we prayed for.

Lord Jesus, we want to exercise our spirit with our resurrected will to pray according to God’s divine will for Christ to be manifested and enjoyed by us, for the Body life to be practiced by us, and for the Body of Christ to be built up through us! Amen, Lord, make us the right kind of persons, those who are fully one with You and who pray according to God’s will for the fulfillment of His economy! Lord, may all the saints enjoy Christ and manifest Him, may they practice the Body life, and may the Body of Christ be built up through them!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother James Lee for this week, and portions from Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 38, chs. 41, 59, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Service for the Building up of the Church (2016 Spring ITERO), week 7 / msg. 7, Serving God by Prayer according to His Heart and Will. 
• All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # My Jesus, as Thou wilt! / Oh, may Thy will be mine! / Into Thy hand of love / I would my all resign; / Through sorrow, or through joy, / Conduct me as Thine own, / And help me still to say, / My Lord, Thy will be done! (Hymns #384)
  # May our prayers expression give / To Thy Spirit’s mind alone; / Praying not by our desire, / But according to Thine own. (Hymns #772)
  # Waiting on Thee, Lord, waiting on Thee; / Make all my prayer to Thee / Thyself expressed thru me, / Give me Thy secret key- / Waiting on Thee, waiting on Thee. (Hymns #792)