Life On the Highest Plane
An Upper Room - Responsive Cooperation
If in Christ's time the harvest was plenteous, the laborers few and the need for prayer imperative, it is even more true today. More than nineteen centuries since He gave the commission to preach the Gospel to every creature, and there are still hundreds of millions who have never heard the Gospel! Still unoccupied fields, untouched classes, unreached tribes! How can we account for this except that God's people have failed to pray for laborers to enter into these harvest fields?
There are certain mission agencies that are making a serious attempt to secure and send missionaries to the unoccupied fields. There are national home missionary societies in various mission fields which are attempting the evangelization of their own people. Will you not endeavor to acquaint yourselves with the work of such movements and then give yourselves in intercession for their needs? Will you not inquire into the need for laborers in the foreign and home missionary societies of your own denomination and then pray Spirit-taught, Spirit-filled, Spirit-anointed men and women out into these various fields?
Have we not clearly seen that union with Christ necessitates a life of prayer in this twofold aspect, reciprocal communion and responsive cooperation? In the "inner room" we meet Him, there He becomes our satisfaction and our sufficiency. And we go from it to our "upper room" to exercise our mediatorial, priestly ministry in bringing Him to be the Saviour and Satisfier to other men.
The Prerequisites for Prevailing Prayer
All prayer is not prevailing prayer. It is not enough to pray, we need to pray in power. First let us consider the prerequisites for prevailing prayer on the manward side.
The first prerequisite is purity of heart. Only the Christian with a clean heart can pray the effectual prayer. Spurgeon has said, "The goal of prayer is the ear of God." If one cannot even get a hearing, he certainly cannot hope for an answer. Iniquity puts a closed door between the man who prays and the God who listens. Sin in the saint stops the ear of God so that He cannot hear.
Isaiah 59:1-2, "Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear."
If a man is to pray right he must be right. God judges the prayer not by the petition upon the lips but by the purity of the life. Only the pure in heart can offer prayer to God with the assurance of its acceptability and answer.
2 Timothy 2:22, "But flee youthful lusts, and follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart."
Hebrews 10:22, "Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."
The man who prays the effectual prayer must be right in his relationship both to God and to man. He must approach the throne with a conscience void of offence toward God and man (Acts 24:16). If in his life there is sympathy for sin and apathy toward God, if there is indulgence of self and indifference toward God, if there is allegiance to satan and disloyalty to God, then his prayer is not heard.
Psalm 66:18, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."
If one would pray the effectual prayer he must be righteous in his relationship with his fellow-men. No pretense of piety will suffice to conceal the presence of dishonesty, greed, jealousy, resentment, unforgiveness or hatred toward others. It has sometimes happened that a truly Spirit-filled man or woman has been shorn of all power in prayer and in preaching because of dishonesty in the handling of funds or because of some unrighteous action in relation to his co-workers.
James 5:16, "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."
Mark 11:25, "And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses."
A second prerequisite for prevailing prayer is "detachment of spirit." True prayer is a spiritual exercise and its field of action is the heavenlies. It deals with the supernatural forces of the unseen world. To pray effectually one must be detached in spirit from the things of time and sense.
But such a thing seems well-nigh impossible in a world where the material, the tangible and the fleshly protrude themselves before one's eyes, press themselves into one's ears, and project themselves into one's life in such a way as almost to submerge and smoother the aspiration for higher and holier things. Besides, almost everything in modern life tends to rob one of the solitude which is so essential at times if one is to keep a keen realization of the presence of God. The apartment house instead of the old-fashioned home puts a whole community into one's front yard; the automobile makes the man in a distant city one's next door neighbor; and the telephone and the radio enable the whole world to enter one's home day and night at will. To be alone is almost a unique experience; to be wholly detached in spirit, even when alone, is far from an easy matter.
But the man who has power with God in prayer must be alone sometimes. Attachment to God and to things eternal and spiritual demands deliberate detachment from the things of earth and sense. The Son of man deliberately withdrew from the sights and sounds of the life that surged about Him that He might find the solitude of spirit that prepared Him for prayer.
Luke 5:15-16, "But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. And he withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed."
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 23)
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