As believers in Christ who love the Lord and pursue to know and experience Christ, we serve God by prayer, and our prayers needs to be according to His heart and will.
In 1 John 5:16 we see that, if we see a brother committing a sin not unto death, we should not gossip about it (and thus spread death) but pray and ask and give life to him. We all need to be those who see, pray, and ask, so that we may give life to the saints and be channels of life to them for the building up of the Body.
In Acts 6:4 the apostles continued steadfastly in the prayer and the ministry of the word; what the Lord is doing today is two main things: He is interceding for us and He is ministering God into us. Our service on earth should correspond to His ministry in the heavens to pray for the saints and minister the Triune God as life into them through the ministry of the word.
In Rev. 22:20 we have the last prayer in the Bible, Amen, Come Lord Jesus! – this is a pray-reading, a praying back of the Lord’s prayer in the previous verse, Yes, I come quickly. We need to pray back the word of God, and as we pray what He has said, we have the confidence that He will do it.
We need to pray humbly and earnestly for the Lord’s presence to fill us and our meetings, and we need to experience the Spirit of prayer and supplication, the Spirit of the enjoyment of the Triune God (Zech. 12:10) through our prayer.
Our prayer is our service to God, and we serve God by praying according to His heart and will. In Col. 4:12 we see how Epaphras struggled on behalf of the saints so that they would stand mature and fully assured in the will of God.
We need to serve God and labor on behalf of the saints by our prayer for them, struggling on their behalf so that the saints would stand mature and fully assured in the will of God. May we be those who we serve God by prayer according to His heart and will!
Joining our Will to God’s Will to be One with Him to Express His will in our Prayer
In this universe there are three wills: the divine will, the satanic will, and the human will. The church is God’s warrior to engage in the spiritual warfare because, besides God’s will which is good, there’s yet another will that rebels against God’s will.
God’s will is eternal, uncreated, perfect, and good. But one of His creatures, Lucifer, an archangel appointed by God to rule the universe that existed before the creation of Adam, became proud because of his high position and beauty; he rebelled against God, and his pride gave rise to an evil intention, which became the satanic will (see Isa. 14:12-15; Ezek. 16).
Lucifer is the first sinner; sin is a dethronement of God. We as human beings and as believers in Christ have a free will to choose the satanic will or God’s will; God wants man’s will to be joined to Him and to be one with Him so that man may express and echo His will back to HIm in prayer for His good pleasure (see Matt. 6:10; 7:21; 26:39; Phil. 2:13).
Our prayer needs to be, Lord, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, as in heavens, so also on earth! The Lord Jesus was the first perfect man, the God-man, who fully chose God’s will, being obedient even unto the death of the cross. Now this One is in us as the life-giving spirit; there is a person in us that is for God’s will one hundred percent!
All we have to do is to cooperate with God’s inner operating: it is God who operates in us both the willing and the working for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). We may not be so willing, but we can tell the Lord, God, operate in me both the willing and the working for Your good pleasure! I may not feel so willing, but please operate in me!
In Gen. 2:9 we see the tree of life, which represents God with His divine will, the three of knowledge of good and evil, which represents Satan with his satanic will, and Adam, which represents man with his human will.
When we join our will to God’s will, take God in as life, are mingled with Him, and have His desire becomes our desire, we will pray what is on His heart and echo His intentions, and we enjoy the spiritual blessings associated with God’s will.
However, we have to admit that we have lost many spiritual blessings because we have not expressed God’s will, according to the principle of the tree of life, through our prayers.
Oh Lord Jesus, we join our will to Your will and pray one with You, Father, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, as in heavens, so also on earth! Amen! We choose to be joined to You, Lord, so that Your will would be done in our lives and on earth. Save us from dethroning You in our being and in our life. Lord, operate in us both the willing and the working for Your good pleasure! We want to be joined to You and fully one with You so that we may express and echo Your will back to You in prayer for Your good pleasure!
Having our Desires Blended with God’s Desires to Pray the Prayers Initiated by God
A genuine man of prayer is not only one who comes before God continually but also one whose desires are fully blended into God’s desires. In other words, his thoughts are fully one with God’s thoughts. This is a very important principle in prayer. (Watchman Nee)
W
e need to pray, Lord, make me a genuine man of prayer! Make my heart a duplication of Your heart! We serve God by praying according to His desire and will, and so we need to let God’s desires be blended with our desires and His thoughts be fully one with our thoughts, so that His desires would be imprinted in us and our heart would be a duplication of His heart.
Samuel was such a person; he prayed for the children of Israel and for the king, and he even considered it a sin not to pray for them (1 Sam. 2:35; 3:21; 12:23). If we cease to pray for the saints we sin before the Lord!
However, the prayers that originate from our needs to satisfy our own lust may be answered by God, but they have no spiritual value; rather, when we pray such prayers, we will become weak before His eyes and unpleasing to Him.
In Num. 11:18-35 the people of Israel complained to God in the wilderness: they wanted meat; God gave them meat for 30 days, until it came out of their nostrils, and it became loathsome to them – they became sick of it (see Psa. 106:14-15).
God’s perfect will is what is best for us. We should not pray for our needs or complain before God concerning what we lust for, but we should pray for God’s will to happen in our life! We need to be in God’s presence continually to have His desires and thoughts infused into us and mingled with our desires and thoughts.
If we live in God’s presence continually, He shows us and touches us with His desires, intentions, and thoughts, and they become ours; we, in turn, pray these back to God for Him to fulfill them.
Here we see that the real meaning of prayer and of all spiritual work is that they consist of four steps:
- God intends to do something according to His will.
- He reveals His will to us through the Spirit for us to know His will.
- We return and echo His will back to Him through prayer.
- God accomplishes His work according to His will.
The almighty God who created the universe, sustains all things by the word of His power, and can do anything He wants by simply speaking, He limits Himself to certain principles and laws: God’s work needs man’s prayer of cooperation.
Our prayer should be the echo of God’s will which is revealed to us in our fellowship with Him in the Body. All the worthwhile prayers are actually “returning prayers”, that is, praying back to God what He has revealed to us to be His will.
Only the prayers that God initiates and that echo what He has initiated have any worth, and God’s work is governed by such prayers. Our God is willing to do many things, but He is limited by His people’s lack of prayer according to His will.
God wants for man to agree with Him on earth so that He can work and do the things He wants to do; when we pray back to God the will of God as revealed through His word, He has our cooperation and the ground to do what He wants to do.
We need to receive the word of God by means of all kinds of prayers; God’s will is revealed in the Bible, and we need to pray-read the word of God to echo and return God’s will back to Him for Him to do what He wants to do (Eph. 6:18; Ezek. 36:37).
If we pray back to God the word of God, His will, we are assured that we have what we have asked for; if we ask according to His will, we will also have the things we have asked for (1 John 5:14).
Lord Jesus, make us genuine men of prayer. Make our heart a duplication of Your heart. Mingle Your thoughts and desires with us, Lord, and make us men in whom God’s desires are imprinted, men of revelation whose heart is a duplication of Your heart! Lord, teach us to pray the prayers that You need, the prayers according to Your will! Save us from praying merely for our needs or according to our lust. We want to pray according to Your will, echoing back Your will to You so that You may do what You want to do!
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. 44, chs. 86-88, 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:
# Lord, I love You, I’m charmed by You. / I open my whole being to be infused by You. / Lord, do whatever You have to do in me / To make me what You need. / Lord, make my heart a duplication of / Your heart in every possible way. / O Lord, do something in me for You, / And keep my heart single for You. / Lord, I love You. (Song on being one with the Lord)
# Make us those who’re one with You in prayer, / Echoing the things for which You care. / Lord, do make us one so that Your heart’s desire we share; / In this age, Lord gain Your men of prayer. (Song on Echoing God’s desire)
# Pray to fellowship with Jesus, / List’ning earnestly to Him; / Be impressed with His intentions, / Yielding to Him from within. (Hymns #784)
About aGodMan
All worthwhile prayers are a kind of returning. If our prayer is only for the fulfillment of our plans and wishes, it will not have any value in the spiritual realm. Only the prayers that are initiated by God and that echo what He has initiated have any worth. God’s work is governed by prayers. God is willing to do many things, but He will not do them when His people do not pray. He must wait for man to agree with Him before He will do them. This is a great principle of God’s work, and it is also one of the most crucial principles in the Bible. (Watchman Nee)