The meaning of prayer is first to absorb God, for the more we contact God, the more we will absorb Him, and the more we will enjoy Him as our light and salvation. Amen!
This week we come to a new topic in the HWMR entitled, Prayer to Absorb God and to Express God by Praying to God as a Friend So That We Can Co-work with God.
This matter of prayer meets both God’s need and our need. Prayer is our top cooperation with God to meet His need; prayer meets a very critical need that we also have.
We need to advance in our prayer life, both personally and corporately; especially in our personal experience and history with the Lord, we need to advance in our prayer life.
Prayer is a good indicator of our spiritual condition; what comes out of our mouth in prayer says a lot about our spiritual condition, our actual relationship with the Lord.
There are some brothers and sisters, however, who have been a believer for many decades, but they still pray the same today as they did many decades ago; it should not be so – we should all advance and have our prayer developed as we go on with the Lord.
May we be like the disciples asking the Lord to teach us to pray, for we don’t know.
We may think we know how to pray and what to pray for, but according to Rom. 8, we don’t know how and what to pray for as is fitting.
We may know how to do certain things, and we may know how to do something called “prayer”, but not everything we call “prayer” is real prayer in the eyes of God.
Not everything that we call “prophesying” in the prophesying meeting is actual prophesying in God’s eyes; not all of our utterance that we call “prayer is real prayer in God’s eyes.
We may think we pray, we may say things to God, but God may not recognize these things as prayer.
It is possible that our view of prayer is very natural, thinking we know what it is.
May we open to the Lord and allow Him to enlighten us and cause us to realize what real prayer is, what is genuine prayer, and may we utter the prayers that are valuable in His eyes.
Before anything else, if what we are doing is really prayer, we will absorb God; prayer is primarily for us to absorb God.
Prayer is not merely just our opening our mouth to ask God for this and for that; prayer is entering into fellowship with the Lord to absorb Him.
This takes time; we can’t simply fellowship with God in thirty seconds.
If we absorb God through our prayer, we have a chance to express God; if we don’t absorb God, it is so easy to express our thought and view and will.
But when we absorb God, we can express Him, for He has infused us with His mind, His feeling, and His will.
When we pray, we can pray to God as a friend, even like Abraham did; what a privilege it is for us to be a friend of God, one who talks to God face to face, without anything formal or composed, but spontaneously what is on our heart.
As we absorb God, express God, and pray as a friend to God, we are infused with Him and He lives in us, and we work together with God to meet His need.
We care not merely for our need but for His need, for as He meets our need we are one with Him to meet His need.
The Meaning of Prayer is to Absorb God – the more we Contact God, the more we Absorb Him and Enjoy Him
The meaning of prayer is primarily that we contact God and absorb Him in our contact with Him.
The meaning of prayer is to absorb God; the more we contact God, the more we will absorb Him, and the more we absorb Him, the more we will enjoy Him as our light and our salvation.
David was such a one who prayed and absorbed God; in Psa. 27:1 he said, “Jehovah is my light and my salvation”; he didn’t say merely that God shines on him and that He saves him but that God is his light and salvation.
God’s being our light and our salvation shows that God Himself is what we need.
Actually, what God gives us is just Himself; light is God, salvation is God, power is God (1 Cor. 1:24), and grace is God (John 1:16-17; 1 Pet. 5:10; 1 Cor. 15:10; cf. Gal. 2:20).
Every spiritual need we have is just God; God is all that we need, and when we pray in a genuine way, we absorb Him and He meets all our needs.
God doesn’t merely give us light apart from Himself; He doesn’t merely give us something called “light” or “salvation” or “love”. Rather, God gives us Himself as light, salvation, and love.
We obtain real love, salvation, light, joy, peace, and life by contacting God in prayer, by absorbing God in our prayer with God.
David contacted and absorbed God by beholding Him as beauty (Psa. 27:4); when he contacted God to absorb God, he was enlightened and received salvation within.
We need to learn to spend time with the Lord and behold Him; this is something we learn through many experiences, many failures, and many times of turning our heart to Him personally.
Beholding God as our beauty is a great key and a great secret to experiencing God for His heart’s desire.
Many times we start as in 2 Cor. 3:16, having a veil on our heart, on our eyes, when we come to the Lord; many times our heart is not turned to the Lord when we come to Him.
But the more we turn to Him, the more we contact the Lord, the more we turn our heart to Him, the more our veil is taken away, and the more we absorb God and are infused with God.
May we learn to turn our heart to the Lord so that we can behold Him face to face and be infused with Him for our transformation into the same image as Christ, even as from the Lord Spirit (vv. 17-18).
Beholding the Lord doesn’t mean merely that we close our eyes and think of Him; the Lord in His word and in our spirit, so we need to exercise our spirit over His word so that we may absorb Him by beholding Him.
By the divine dispensing through the washing of the water of life in the word of Christ, we are infused with God, and we are even beautified to become the house of His beauty, His beautiful bride for His beautification (see Isa. 60:7, 9, 13, 19, 21; 59:21; Eph. 5:26-27; Rev. 19:7).
We need to come to the Lord in His word, allowing the Lord to wash us and cleanse us by the washing of the water in the word; this will bring in His element and discharge our old element, and we will be reconstituted with Him to be His bride, His counterpart, for His satisfaction.
The way we behold the Lord is by coming to His word and reading, praying, and musing over His word.
When we exercise our spirit over the word of God, waiting on the Lord and looking to Him, we absorb God, we are infused with God, and we gain more God.
This is the way to behold Him and be transformed into His image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.
Lord Jesus, teach us how to pray so that we may absorb God in our contact with God. We open to You, dear Lord, and we turn our heart to You. Remove any veil from our heart so that we may see You face to face. Oh Lord, we desire to behold You in Your house and in Your word. May our heart be turned to You so that we may absorb You in our time with You in Your word. Amen, Lord, You are our light and salvation. You are our peace and our joy. You are everything that we need. We love to behold You, Lord, so that we may experience God for His heart’s desire. Wash us by the water in the word of Christ and beautify us as the house of Your beauty to be Your beautiful bride for Your beautification! We love You, dear Lord Jesus!
To Pray is to come to the Lord just as we are, Entering into His Presence to Contact God
The meaning of prayer is so high and wonderful – that is, to absorb God – but many times we think that we’re not worthy to come to God as we are.
We may think that we need to try to improve our condition, change our situation, and better ourselves, so that we may be “pleasing to God” before we come to pray to God.
There’s a hymn that says, “Just as I am” (Hymns 1048); we need to come to God just as we are, without trying to improve or change our condition.
We received Christ in this way, and we should walk in Christ in this way also (Col. 2:6-7).
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness (John 4:24); truthfulness here refers to genuineness, what is genuinely going on within us.
God is Spirit; our contacting and absorbing Him doesn’t depend on our words but on our contact with Him in spirit.
As we come to the Lord, sigh concerning our situation, and open our whole being, we contact Him as the Spirit and we absorb God.
We may confess how incompetent, weak, unable to rise, unpresentable, and thirsty we are, and we may acknowledge that we are not inclined to fellowship with the Lord or with the saints, neither do we have a heart for the gospel.
The Lord already knows where we are, what’s going on in us and with us, and what our condition really is; we shouldn’t wait to change or improve our condition but rather, come to the Lord as we are.
Just come to Him in prayer even as you are – He already knows, so we can come to Him as we are, laying our inner condition before Him and telling Him that we are so short in every matter.
Even if we are weak, confused, sad, and speechless, we can still come to God; we can come to Him even as we are.
No matter what our inner condition is, we should bring it to God.
For example, Peter in the gospels made many mistakes, but he kept coming to the Lord; the Lord shepherded him in a special way because he needed it.
When we come to the Lord, we realize that He is our friend; He doesn’t condemn us or look down on us but rather, He sympathizes with us and listens to us, and He infuses something of Himself into us every time we come to Him.
If we feel sad, we should come to the Lord and tell Him we’re sad; if we are happy, we should also come to Him and tell Him.
This doesn’t mean that we ignore our problems and our current situation but rather that we bring our actual condition to Him and open to Him.
We shouldn’t wait for our condition to improve or try to fix our situation: we simply need to learn to tell Him about it, opening to Him.
Instead of caring about our condition, we need to enter into God’s presence to contact Him by looking to Him, beholding Him, praising Him, giving Him thanks, and worshipping Him; in this way, we absorb God.
Then, we will enjoy God’s riches and taste His sweetness; we receive Him as light and power, and we are inwardly filled with peace, brightness, strength, and power (1 Pet. 4:10-11; 2 Cor. 2:17; 13:3).
May we learn the secret of contacting God in prayer by coming to Him as we are; may we learn to pray and draw near to God no matter what our condition is.
When we pray, we should behold His glorious face and linger in His presence; by remaining before the Lord in His word, we absorb God and are infused with what He is.
This is our need today, to look to God, wait on Him, muse upon Him, and absorb Him in our contact with Him, so that He may be infused into us. He in us can live the Christian life, and our real need is for more of Him.
Lord Jesus, we come to You as we are. We lay our inner condition before You and we confess all our sins, shortcomings, and weaknesses to You. You know how incompetent, weak, and unpresentable we are. We open to You and confess how short we are in every matter. We bring You all our situations and we lay our condition before You. We just open, dear Lord, and we allow You to come in. We want to absorb God and be inwardly filled with God. We come into Your presence to contact God by looking to Him, beholding Him, praising Him, giving Him thanks, worshipping Him, and absorbing Him. Amen, Lord, we love to enjoy Your riches, taste Your sweetness, and receive You as our light and power. Keep us inwardly connected to You as we are ministering the word to others and as we live our daily Christian life.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a message by bro. Mark Raabe on this topic, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1956, vol. 3, “The Meaning and Purpose of Prayer,” ch. 1, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Meeting God’s Need and Present needs in the Lord’s Recovery, week 4, entitled, Prayer to Absorb God and to Express God by Praying to God as a Friend So That We Can Co-work with God.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Take time to behold Him, / Speak oft with Thy Lord, / Abide in Him always, / And feed on His Word. / Wait thou in His presence, / Submissive and meek, / Forgetting in nothing / His blessing to seek. (Hymns #643)
– Pray to fellowship with Jesus, / Fully opened from within, / With thy face unveiled, beholding, / Single, pure, and genuine. (Hymns #784)
– Just as I am, without one plea, / But that Thy blood was shed for me, / And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee, / O Lamb of God, I come! I come! (Hymns #1048)
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