Preface
Prayer should be as natural as breathing and as enjoyable as eating.
Prayer should be as unconscious as our communication with each other.
It should not be the child of need, but should be based on a spiritual fellowship with the Father and with the Master so that our needs are His needs; for we are not our own, we are a part of Him.
Our body is not our own.
The property we control is not our own.
Our abilities are not our own.
They are all His.
So we are laboring together with Him, and what we have considered personal needs are really His needs.
The work that we are doing is His work, so that prayer is not what we have thought it was; but it is a fellowship a sharing; it is community interest.
We are one in this, just as the vine and the branch are one. The branch cannot bear fruit alone, and the vine cannot bear fruit without the branch.
So prayer is simply talking it over with Him, getting His views, His will, His plans, and our carrying out those plans with His grace, ability and wisdom.
Habits are the children of our choice.
We are what we make ourselves.
This prayer habit will be born of your own will.
This habit is hard to form for most people. It should never be a duty, for just as we do not enjoy those who visit us because it is their duty, so it is with the Father.
We want those who love us to come because they cannot help it.
Prayer is a visit with our Father.
We should think of it as a rare opportunity.
Chapter Two
The Prayer Habit
The names that are familiar to us in God’s Westminster Abbey of the Church are the names of those who pray; men and women who have climbed the mountains of usefulness in the struggle with circumstances through prayer.
There is no denying that the lack of prayer is the bane of the individual member of the body of Christ.
Jesus was a man of prayer.
He taught prayer, not as a slavish duty, but as a glorious privilege.
I used to wonder why He needed to pray.
He took His human place, and lived the human life.
I have a conviction that He didn't draw upon the secret resources that belonged to Him, more than it is possible for us who live and walk in His Name.
Jesus' ministry in healing illustrated what our prayer life may do for us.
He didn't exercise His divine prerogatives during His three years' ministry any more than any child of God may exercise them today.
He had a human body.
He had the limitations that go with the Incarnation.
The believer is a New Creation, created in Christ Jesus. He is brought into the family of God. He is an heir of God and a joint-heir with Jesus Christ.
He is a child of God.
The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in his body. Plus this, Jesus has given him the power of attorney to use His Name.
The more that I study the life of Jesus, I am convinced that He did not exercise divine power in excess of what every intelligent child of God possesses today.
The difference is that Jesus knew what belonged to Him and Jesus used His rights.
We do not know what belongs to us. Not knowing what is ours, we cannot use our rights.
When Jesus cast out demons, He used authority that He has delegated to the church.
The forces of hell could not touch Him or injure Him; He was simply using the divine ability that is delegated to us.
He said, “In my Name you shall cast out demons.”
The forces of hell could not touch Him or injure Him; He was simply using divine ability that is delegated to us.
"Ye shall take up serpents and they shall not injure you."
The poison of vipers has no power over the Christian's body, who knows his place in Christ.
The apostle Paul loosened the deadly fangs of a viper that had fastened itself into his hand, and shook the thing off without injury.
Paul simply illustrated what Jesus had promised.
Let me state it again: I am convinced that intelligent children of the Lord could walk in the same life and power and divine liberty as Jesus walked, if they understood their privileges.
He said, "If you shall drink any deadly thing it shall not harm you."
Poison could not be administered to the Lord Jesus and take effect.
It cannot be administered to the body of Christ and take effect if the members of that body walk in the knowledge and liberty of the sons of God.
This is not extreme.
It is simply walking in the realm of Life.
We have been translated out of the realm of darkness; that is, the kingdom, of weakness, darkness and ignorance.
We have been translated into the kingdom of the Son of His Love, which is the realm of wealth, of life, of light, joy, of peace, and of faith.
Let me state it again: Jesus in His earth walk, as the Incarnate Son of God, beginning with His baptism, lived exactly as every child of God should live today.
God wasn't any more His Father than He is ours.
He said, "The Father loves you even as He loves me."
He was the Son of God.
You are a son of God.
He was Deity.
You are a partaker of the Divine Nature, that is Deity.
He had the Holy Spirit dwelling in Him.
You have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you.
The difference is that Jesus gave the Holy Spirit right of way in a sense of which we have never yet learned.
He took advantage of the God-life within Him in a way that we have never yet been able to take advantage of the God-life within us.
But, you say, Jesus was not mortal as we are.
That is true.
But, by faith the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.
Our bodies shall not have dominion over us as we walk in the realm of God.
Again, Paul says that our bodies are dead, have lost their mortal effectiveness in reigning over our spirits.
I believe that God planned that we should walk in the fullness of the Divine Life; that we should dare to take our positions as sons and daughters of God; and that the hour is coming before the Lord's return in which a remnant of the body will rise and walk before God the Father in the fullness of the New Creation Life.
Disease will not be able to lay hold upon us.
Ignorance and fear will be banished, because the Wisdom that comes from above that is in Jesus, will lead us into the full dream, ambitions and purposes of our Father.
Now, I want you to notice that God has made Jesus to be our Redemption.
Paul said, in Ephesians 1:7: "In whom we have our Redemption."
1 Corinthians 1:30 declares that He "is our Redemption."
You dare to measure that!
You dare to set limits on that!
The limits of that Redemption are the limits of Jesus.
He was made unto us Wisdom from God.
The limits of that Wisdom are the limits of the Eternal Son of God.
He is made unto us Sanctification.
The limits of that Sanctification are the limits of Jesus.
He is our Life, and the limits of that Life are the limits of the Life of the Son of God.
You see, our feeble reasoning has pushed faith out of the arena.
The Devil can combat successfully against our reason.
But if Faith gets reason's place, Satan is whipped.
The great body of the most advanced Bible teachers today, are held in the bondage of Sense Knowledge.
Their interpretations are often evasions.
Because of the opinions of men, they dare not take their real place.
Consequently the Word of God has little effect.
Let us humbly and fearlessly, and in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, take our place.
If we are New Creations created in Christ Jesus, let us ask the Father to set the limits of that New Creation, instead of allowing theologians to do it.
Faith will lead you where reason cannot walk.
Reason has never been a mountain climber.
Faith, like a mountain sheep, can scale the loftiest mountain peaks without fear.
I offer this as a subject for meditation, not controversy.
I offer this as a contribution after years of heart-searching, of out-reaching after the bigger, fuller life in Christ.
I know it is not in the Realm of Reason, but I know it is where Faith walks; and God is challenging us in these last days to get the light and the knowledge that will fit us for the closing of this dispensation.
The message that John Wesley brought was truth, but it was only part of the truth.
Calvin had only a little of the light.
There have been revelations continually from the Word during these hundreds of years.
Don't you think it is time that we passed out of the swaddling clothes period into the stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus?
So, let us dare to climb the heights of God.
Let us say without fear, "I am what He says I am."
"He is in me what He says He is."
"I can do, with His ability in me, what He says I can."
This makes life big and rich.
This makes us worthwhile to Him!
This will make us partners with Him.
We will be in that prized inner-circle with Him, one of the busted ones.
When He has a difficult mission, He will call on us. You see, He will find it easy to reach us as we constantly visit Him.
Take your place! Enjoy your rights!
All Kinds of Prayer
Ephesians 6:10 (Moffatt): "Hold your ground, tighten the shield of truth about you, wear integrity as your coat of mail, have your feet shod with the stability of the gospel of peace, above all, take faith as your shield to enable you to quench the fire-tipped darts flung by the evil one. Put on salvation as your helmet, take the Spirit as your sword, (That is, the Word of God), praying at all times in the spirit, with all manner of prayer and entreaty... be alive to that, attend to it unceasingly."
You will notice by this translation that the object of the Christian soldier's coat of mail or armor, is that he may enter the prayer fight.
Preaching and personal work are God-honored and blessed vocations or ministries, but prayer is the foundation of it all.
A man might preach with the eloquence of a Billy Graham and be the most skilled of diplomats as a soul winner, but he will fall short of his ministry in both fields if he isn't backed up by the prayer life.
The failure of all Christian enterprises is a prayer failure.
Prayer alone gives success.
There are many different kinds of prayer.
There is simple petition lifting its sentences in Jesus' Name to the heart of Love.
There is persistent, tenacious prayer that will not yield until the answer comes.
There is prevailing prayer that overcomes every obstacle, that finally lands the answer in the harbor of peace.
There is battle prayer, with its tears and agony, its intense yearning.
There is the quiet prayer of faith whose voice is never lifted above a whisper, but whose persistent faith shakes the very throne of heaven.
There is prayer without ceasing that seems to perfume every act of the persistent pray-er.
Then, there is the unconscious prayer attitude.
Paul says by the Spirit: "Praying with all kinds of prayer."
How desperately a nation needs it.
How desperately the church needs it.
Nothing can take the place of prayer.
Every believer should go into the school of prayer with Christ and actually learn the secret of prayer, the precious ministry of intercession.
The prayer of Intercession is the prayer for another, not for self. It is the prayer that passes out from your domain, your realm, into the realm of another.
Jesus ever lives to make Intercession at the right hand of the Father.
The Holy Spirit in us oft-times makes Intercession that cannot be uttered in words.
Oft-times we are depressed; we cannot understand it or see any reason for it; it is the Holy Spirit in agony reaching through us to the Father.
If our spirits were only fruitful, perhaps we could understand the language and the agony of the Spirit in His mighty outreaching toward the throne of grace.
If our lives were only more perfectly under His sway He might be able to breathe His passion through our conscious faculties, in His mighty agony for lost men and women.
Often-times our spirits are dull, and He cannot communicate His passion and yearning through them to our minds.
So, it becomes unintelligible agony, "groanings that cannot be uttered.
I suppose this is the reason why certain men and women are led to become the prayer channels for a whole congregation.
So few of us, in our busy lives, take time to pray, that the Spirit searches through the congregation for the willing hearts that will deny themselves some of the common pleasures and will be first in the line of prayer instead of last.
On these willing hearts rolls the burden of the entire church.
Thank God, that in our church are found those who are willing to set aside whole nights of prayer; who will leave the joy of visiting with loved ones, and hide away alone with Him to take my burden and yours that we have in some way failed to roll on the Lord.
They encompass our Jericho with their persistent intercession.
It is a pity that more of us do not force ourselves into a life of prayer.
We have the time.
We use it in useless talk, or careless reading.
While the Spirit is searching for an outlet He must pass us by because we are not ready.
Oh, I beseech you, Reader, not to talk about it any more, or plan when you will do it, but begin it now.
Force yourself into the prayer life. Regardless of how you feel, drive yourself to prayer.
You will be amazed how halting and stumbling will be your first attempts.
You have been rated, perhaps, as an unusual Christian worker in the Church.
Men look upon you as an outstanding Christian, but if they knew that in behind your public profession there was an empty closet, or an unused prayer room, they would be amazed.
If you live with the Lord in secret, you will be able to pray with great freedom in public.
Unconsciously we call upon the people to pray who are on praying terms with the Lord.
Seldom will a spiritual mind reach out to an unspiritual life for help.
It is only when we are clutching at straws that we do it.
You see, prayer has several elements.
It brings you into personal fellowship and touch with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit, and with Jesus.
All three of the Godhead are brought into the prayer life.
You are praying to the Father.
You are praying in the Name of Jesus.
You are praying through the Holy Spirit.
Your prayer is based upon the Word.
It brings this earth heart of ours into contact with the heavenly center of all divine power and activity.
You can't spend any length of time in prayer without being affected by it.
The quietness, the unshaken faith, the deep, unsounded peace that pervades the Godhead, will overflow into the pray-er's life.
Said an anxious and nervous mother: "You will have to forgive me, children, but I forgot to visit the Master this morning, and so I lack His quietness and His strength."
Many of us can make that confession, that our irritability, weakness, and lack of spiritual insight comes from not sitting in the presence of the Master.
One cannot spend an hour in conscious communion with the Father, the Son, the Spirit and the Word without carrying away from that anointed place the fragrance that fills the atmosphere.
There is a heavenly fragrance about Jesus that lingers with the pray-ers.
They are slow to speak.
They are slow to judge.
They are quick to love and quick to help.
There is a holy calmness about their lives that challenges the restless ones; they crave that quietness of spirit.
Again, we cannot spend time with them without partaking of their stability and their unshakableness.
One who is easily disturbed, and who in the jolts of life is unseated, will find a new strength and steadiness that will make him a blessing to the world, by spending just a little time with the Rock of our Strength.
You see, a few moments with Him tunes us up, fills the battery, adjusts the carburetor, and makes it easy for us to face life's uneven conditions.
It gives us poise and holy dignity in our contacts.
Faith makes us an intelligent victor.
Faith makes mountains and difficulties take their true position.
You can't sit with the God of all Faith and all Love, for one half hour each day, without unconsciously breathing in the Faith of God.
What would it mean to you, if Jesus should come into your home as He came into the home of Mary and Martha?
You would take time to visit with Him!
"Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." (John 14:23)
You love Him, invite Him into your home, and then get acquainted with Him.
Learn to talk things over with Him.
He is there; visit with Him!
Remember, He loves you, He is interested in all your problems.
He will make His Word answer every question; He will make Himself real in your life and home.
Prayer On a Winning Basis
He made prayer a winning business proposition.
We didn't ask Him to do it.
We didn't send our representative and say, "Now, Father, we want you to give us certain promises and certain abilities."
No. He did it all. He planned it all for us.
He based a prayer life upon His own Word.
It was a daring thing for Him to do, but He believed that we would believe.
He dared to give His Son.
He dared to give man Eternal Life.
He dared to make us New Creations.
Why? Because He believed that man would respond to His love and that man, when challenged by such grace, would meet it with a glad response.
And so we are fellowshipping Him in His faith fight for a lost race.
We are helping the men for whom His Son died and has redeemed.
Our combat is warring against God's enemy.
It is saving the men for whom Christ died.
It is making strong the weak.
It is giving God's children a chance for winning in life's fight.
We are the instruments. We are the forerunners. We are the pioneers in this marvelous life of faith.
We are joining the men of all the ages who have dared to walk where paths have never been.
We are opening channels for His grace to reach the human race.
We are God's under-engineers.
We are building roads for others to walk upon.
Our faith life has joined with God's faith life and we have become His "tilled land," "His fellow-workers".
We are the branches that are bearing the real fruit from the real vine.
We are opening channels through which He can pour Himself out on man.
Our ministry is not a failure. We are winning.
We are making out of these failure-men, successes.
Our union with Him is beckoning other men to dare come into the union too.
They see failures transfigured into successes.
They see men who have been held for years absolute slaves to narcotics and drink, set free to walk in the fullness of their liberty in Christ.
And those in bondage reach their hands out for help, and our Father grasps them and lifts them up onto the solid rock.
Come on you pray-ers, join this mighty group of intercessors who are making the desert places blossom like the rose.
Come on you men and women who have never made prayer a business. Make your investment of time. Learn the art, yes, the secret of this the greatest business of the age.
Throw yourself open. Let Him pour Himself through you until your home and your business and your associates will feel the throb of His mighty life and the lift of His love.
Let me state it with all the simplicity possible, that you can't have prayers answered without having Miracles performed.
Prayer and Miracles
If you deny that Miracles are for this age, you deny the need, and the privileges and the benefits of prayer.
The two-fold value of prayer lies first in sitting in His presence, or in direct Fellowship with the Father.
The second benefit is the answer that comes to us.
John says, "If we ask anything according to His will, we know that He heareth us, and if we know that He hears us, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked."
For God the Father to hear my prayer is equivalent to His answering it.
Now, for God to hear me is a Miracle.
For God to answer my prayer, regardless of its nature, is a Miracle.
Whether my petition is for a postage stamp or for a million dollars, it is a miracle.
Any divine intervention, any arrest of the laws of nature that comes in answer to Faith, is a Miracle.
If prayer brings an answer, that answer is a Miracle. It is then that Faith has its true place.
The instant that you say there are no Miracles in this dispensation, you deny that our walk is a walk by Faith, and you declare that our walk is a walk by Reason.
I challenge you to find one place where God tells us as believers to walk by Reason.
God is a Faith God.
We are a Faith Family.
We are all born by Faith.
We live by Faith.
By Faith we live, breathe, and have our being in Christ.
If there are no Miracles, then there is no reason for Faith.
If there are no Miracles, God can't answer prayer, because He can't answer prayer of any character that is not a Miracle.
You men and women who tell me that you believe the Bible to be the Word of God, that it is God-breathed and without error in the original, and then, in the same breath, tell me that the Day of Miracles is past, you are the most illogical thinkers, the most inconsistent believers that the Devil ever deluded.
I believe profoundly that the Devil is the deceiver of the whole inhabited earth and of that type of Christian in particular.
So, let us reverently come back to God.
Let us take our place.
If we pray at all, we expect prayer to be answered.
If that prayer is answered, God has done it; and if God has answered prayer He has performed something outside of the Realm of Reason.
We will have to give up our prayer life utterly or we will have to believe in Miracles.
I believe in Miracles.
I believe in divine intervention.
I believe that the prayer of Faith reaches God our Father, and when it reaches Him He acts in response to that Faith.
When He acts in response to our Faith, His action is above our reason. It is in the Realm of Miracles.
For me to deny the privilege and benefits of prayer would raise a storm of protest among those who deny Miracles today.
I want you to see, my brother and sister, as you read this today, that your position is untenable.
Faith causes a man to act like God.
Love makes him like God.
The Supernatural
Prayer is an excursion into the supernatural realm.
You are in the Throne Room in the Presence of God, of All Ability. He has promised to hear your petition and to give you your request. You have come on the ground of His Word.
He said: "Whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my Name he will give it you."
You understand that the words that Jesus spoke were His Father's words; so you come now with the Father's words in your lips, and you are making your appeal on the ground of His own Word.
Taking a Son's Place
You are not a servant.
You are not a slave.
You are a son. You are taking Jesus' place, acting in His stead, doing the Father's will.
You may know that you are the Father's will just as Jesus was the Father's will, because of His own will He begat you.
You are the fruit of His own Word. You came into being by His own power and ability. You have received Eternal Life, His very Nature.
You recognize your place in Christ. You are acting the part of a Son.
The great unsaved world must know what He has done for them in Christ; and so you are taking His ability, doing your part in the saving of men as Jesus did His part.
You belong to a supernatural order of being whether you recognize it or not, whether you have taken your place or not. You have the ability of the indwelling presence.
You have the wisdom that Jesus had in His earth walk because Jesus has been made unto you wisdom.
You can think of yourself as linked up with Ability, linked with Omnipotence.
You remember He said: "And nothing shall be impossible to you.
I know that Sense Knowledge reasoning shrinks from this, but here is where the challenge of grace leads you.
We dare to take our place, we dare confess what we are, we to dare confess that He made us what we are, that we can do what He says we can do because He is at work within us.
We have His Word that He is in us. The latent ability and energy within us is His Who gave it to us.
This makes the prayer life a master thing.
You are not asking for the possible. You are always praying for the impossible. You are asking for things that can't be done by any human method.
You are an overcomer in this life!
Questions
1. The Author says, “The more that I study the life of Jesus, I am convinced that He did not exercise divine power in excess of what every intelligent child of God possesses today.” What is the difference between Jesus and us?
2. The Author keeps saying, “Let me state it again…” and finally he says, “Jesus in His earth walk, as the Incarnate Son of God, beginning with His baptism, lived exactly as every child of God should live today.” What are the points he is wanting us to understand?
3. 1 Corinthians 1:30 “God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.” (NLT) When we allow our feeble reasoning to prevail, it pushes faith out of the arena. Consequently, the Word of God has little effect. What are we to do?
4. The failure of all Christian enterprises is:
5. There are many different kinds of prayer. What are they?
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
6. What do Believers do instead of pray? What should we do?
1)
2)
7. Prayer has several elements. Three are listed. What are they?
1)
2)
8. What is evident about a person who is a pray-er?
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
9. What does “Prayer on a winning Basis” mean?
10. What is the two-fold value of prayer?
1)
2)
11. For someone to say they believe the Bible to be the Word of God, it is God-breathed, and without error in the original writings, and then in the same breath say the Day of Miracles is past is equivalent to being what?
12. Complete these sentences:
Faith causes a man t .
Love makes him l .
13. The prayer of Faith reaches God our Father, and when it reaches Him He acts in response to that Faith. When He acts in response to our Faith, His action is what?
14. What is supernatural about prayer?
15. As a Born-again Christian what happened to you?
1)
2)
3)
4)
Prayer should be as natural as breathing and as enjoyable as eating.
Prayer should be as unconscious as our communication with each other.
It should not be the child of need, but should be based on a spiritual fellowship with the Father and with the Master so that our needs are His needs; for we are not our own, we are a part of Him.
Our body is not our own.
The property we control is not our own.
Our abilities are not our own.
They are all His.
So we are laboring together with Him, and what we have considered personal needs are really His needs.
The work that we are doing is His work, so that prayer is not what we have thought it was; but it is a fellowship a sharing; it is community interest.
We are one in this, just as the vine and the branch are one. The branch cannot bear fruit alone, and the vine cannot bear fruit without the branch.
So prayer is simply talking it over with Him, getting His views, His will, His plans, and our carrying out those plans with His grace, ability and wisdom.
Habits are the children of our choice.
We are what we make ourselves.
This prayer habit will be born of your own will.
This habit is hard to form for most people. It should never be a duty, for just as we do not enjoy those who visit us because it is their duty, so it is with the Father.
We want those who love us to come because they cannot help it.
Prayer is a visit with our Father.
We should think of it as a rare opportunity.
Chapter Two
The Prayer Habit
The names that are familiar to us in God’s Westminster Abbey of the Church are the names of those who pray; men and women who have climbed the mountains of usefulness in the struggle with circumstances through prayer.
There is no denying that the lack of prayer is the bane of the individual member of the body of Christ.
Jesus was a man of prayer.
He taught prayer, not as a slavish duty, but as a glorious privilege.
I used to wonder why He needed to pray.
He took His human place, and lived the human life.
I have a conviction that He didn't draw upon the secret resources that belonged to Him, more than it is possible for us who live and walk in His Name.
Jesus' ministry in healing illustrated what our prayer life may do for us.
He didn't exercise His divine prerogatives during His three years' ministry any more than any child of God may exercise them today.
He had a human body.
He had the limitations that go with the Incarnation.
The believer is a New Creation, created in Christ Jesus. He is brought into the family of God. He is an heir of God and a joint-heir with Jesus Christ.
He is a child of God.
The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in his body. Plus this, Jesus has given him the power of attorney to use His Name.
The more that I study the life of Jesus, I am convinced that He did not exercise divine power in excess of what every intelligent child of God possesses today.
The difference is that Jesus knew what belonged to Him and Jesus used His rights.
We do not know what belongs to us. Not knowing what is ours, we cannot use our rights.
When Jesus cast out demons, He used authority that He has delegated to the church.
The forces of hell could not touch Him or injure Him; He was simply using the divine ability that is delegated to us.
He said, “In my Name you shall cast out demons.”
The forces of hell could not touch Him or injure Him; He was simply using divine ability that is delegated to us.
"Ye shall take up serpents and they shall not injure you."
The poison of vipers has no power over the Christian's body, who knows his place in Christ.
The apostle Paul loosened the deadly fangs of a viper that had fastened itself into his hand, and shook the thing off without injury.
Paul simply illustrated what Jesus had promised.
Let me state it again: I am convinced that intelligent children of the Lord could walk in the same life and power and divine liberty as Jesus walked, if they understood their privileges.
He said, "If you shall drink any deadly thing it shall not harm you."
Poison could not be administered to the Lord Jesus and take effect.
It cannot be administered to the body of Christ and take effect if the members of that body walk in the knowledge and liberty of the sons of God.
This is not extreme.
It is simply walking in the realm of Life.
We have been translated out of the realm of darkness; that is, the kingdom, of weakness, darkness and ignorance.
We have been translated into the kingdom of the Son of His Love, which is the realm of wealth, of life, of light, joy, of peace, and of faith.
Let me state it again: Jesus in His earth walk, as the Incarnate Son of God, beginning with His baptism, lived exactly as every child of God should live today.
God wasn't any more His Father than He is ours.
He said, "The Father loves you even as He loves me."
He was the Son of God.
You are a son of God.
He was Deity.
You are a partaker of the Divine Nature, that is Deity.
He had the Holy Spirit dwelling in Him.
You have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you.
The difference is that Jesus gave the Holy Spirit right of way in a sense of which we have never yet learned.
He took advantage of the God-life within Him in a way that we have never yet been able to take advantage of the God-life within us.
But, you say, Jesus was not mortal as we are.
That is true.
But, by faith the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.
Our bodies shall not have dominion over us as we walk in the realm of God.
Again, Paul says that our bodies are dead, have lost their mortal effectiveness in reigning over our spirits.
I believe that God planned that we should walk in the fullness of the Divine Life; that we should dare to take our positions as sons and daughters of God; and that the hour is coming before the Lord's return in which a remnant of the body will rise and walk before God the Father in the fullness of the New Creation Life.
Disease will not be able to lay hold upon us.
Ignorance and fear will be banished, because the Wisdom that comes from above that is in Jesus, will lead us into the full dream, ambitions and purposes of our Father.
Now, I want you to notice that God has made Jesus to be our Redemption.
Paul said, in Ephesians 1:7: "In whom we have our Redemption."
1 Corinthians 1:30 declares that He "is our Redemption."
You dare to measure that!
You dare to set limits on that!
The limits of that Redemption are the limits of Jesus.
He was made unto us Wisdom from God.
The limits of that Wisdom are the limits of the Eternal Son of God.
He is made unto us Sanctification.
The limits of that Sanctification are the limits of Jesus.
He is our Life, and the limits of that Life are the limits of the Life of the Son of God.
You see, our feeble reasoning has pushed faith out of the arena.
The Devil can combat successfully against our reason.
But if Faith gets reason's place, Satan is whipped.
The great body of the most advanced Bible teachers today, are held in the bondage of Sense Knowledge.
Their interpretations are often evasions.
Because of the opinions of men, they dare not take their real place.
Consequently the Word of God has little effect.
Let us humbly and fearlessly, and in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, take our place.
If we are New Creations created in Christ Jesus, let us ask the Father to set the limits of that New Creation, instead of allowing theologians to do it.
Faith will lead you where reason cannot walk.
Reason has never been a mountain climber.
Faith, like a mountain sheep, can scale the loftiest mountain peaks without fear.
I offer this as a subject for meditation, not controversy.
I offer this as a contribution after years of heart-searching, of out-reaching after the bigger, fuller life in Christ.
I know it is not in the Realm of Reason, but I know it is where Faith walks; and God is challenging us in these last days to get the light and the knowledge that will fit us for the closing of this dispensation.
The message that John Wesley brought was truth, but it was only part of the truth.
Calvin had only a little of the light.
There have been revelations continually from the Word during these hundreds of years.
Don't you think it is time that we passed out of the swaddling clothes period into the stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus?
So, let us dare to climb the heights of God.
Let us say without fear, "I am what He says I am."
"He is in me what He says He is."
"I can do, with His ability in me, what He says I can."
This makes life big and rich.
This makes us worthwhile to Him!
This will make us partners with Him.
We will be in that prized inner-circle with Him, one of the busted ones.
When He has a difficult mission, He will call on us. You see, He will find it easy to reach us as we constantly visit Him.
Take your place! Enjoy your rights!
All Kinds of Prayer
Ephesians 6:10 (Moffatt): "Hold your ground, tighten the shield of truth about you, wear integrity as your coat of mail, have your feet shod with the stability of the gospel of peace, above all, take faith as your shield to enable you to quench the fire-tipped darts flung by the evil one. Put on salvation as your helmet, take the Spirit as your sword, (That is, the Word of God), praying at all times in the spirit, with all manner of prayer and entreaty... be alive to that, attend to it unceasingly."
You will notice by this translation that the object of the Christian soldier's coat of mail or armor, is that he may enter the prayer fight.
Preaching and personal work are God-honored and blessed vocations or ministries, but prayer is the foundation of it all.
A man might preach with the eloquence of a Billy Graham and be the most skilled of diplomats as a soul winner, but he will fall short of his ministry in both fields if he isn't backed up by the prayer life.
The failure of all Christian enterprises is a prayer failure.
Prayer alone gives success.
There are many different kinds of prayer.
There is simple petition lifting its sentences in Jesus' Name to the heart of Love.
There is persistent, tenacious prayer that will not yield until the answer comes.
There is prevailing prayer that overcomes every obstacle, that finally lands the answer in the harbor of peace.
There is battle prayer, with its tears and agony, its intense yearning.
There is the quiet prayer of faith whose voice is never lifted above a whisper, but whose persistent faith shakes the very throne of heaven.
There is prayer without ceasing that seems to perfume every act of the persistent pray-er.
Then, there is the unconscious prayer attitude.
Paul says by the Spirit: "Praying with all kinds of prayer."
How desperately a nation needs it.
How desperately the church needs it.
Nothing can take the place of prayer.
Every believer should go into the school of prayer with Christ and actually learn the secret of prayer, the precious ministry of intercession.
The prayer of Intercession is the prayer for another, not for self. It is the prayer that passes out from your domain, your realm, into the realm of another.
Jesus ever lives to make Intercession at the right hand of the Father.
The Holy Spirit in us oft-times makes Intercession that cannot be uttered in words.
Oft-times we are depressed; we cannot understand it or see any reason for it; it is the Holy Spirit in agony reaching through us to the Father.
If our spirits were only fruitful, perhaps we could understand the language and the agony of the Spirit in His mighty outreaching toward the throne of grace.
If our lives were only more perfectly under His sway He might be able to breathe His passion through our conscious faculties, in His mighty agony for lost men and women.
Often-times our spirits are dull, and He cannot communicate His passion and yearning through them to our minds.
So, it becomes unintelligible agony, "groanings that cannot be uttered.
I suppose this is the reason why certain men and women are led to become the prayer channels for a whole congregation.
So few of us, in our busy lives, take time to pray, that the Spirit searches through the congregation for the willing hearts that will deny themselves some of the common pleasures and will be first in the line of prayer instead of last.
On these willing hearts rolls the burden of the entire church.
Thank God, that in our church are found those who are willing to set aside whole nights of prayer; who will leave the joy of visiting with loved ones, and hide away alone with Him to take my burden and yours that we have in some way failed to roll on the Lord.
They encompass our Jericho with their persistent intercession.
It is a pity that more of us do not force ourselves into a life of prayer.
We have the time.
We use it in useless talk, or careless reading.
While the Spirit is searching for an outlet He must pass us by because we are not ready.
Oh, I beseech you, Reader, not to talk about it any more, or plan when you will do it, but begin it now.
Force yourself into the prayer life. Regardless of how you feel, drive yourself to prayer.
You will be amazed how halting and stumbling will be your first attempts.
You have been rated, perhaps, as an unusual Christian worker in the Church.
Men look upon you as an outstanding Christian, but if they knew that in behind your public profession there was an empty closet, or an unused prayer room, they would be amazed.
If you live with the Lord in secret, you will be able to pray with great freedom in public.
Unconsciously we call upon the people to pray who are on praying terms with the Lord.
Seldom will a spiritual mind reach out to an unspiritual life for help.
It is only when we are clutching at straws that we do it.
You see, prayer has several elements.
It brings you into personal fellowship and touch with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit, and with Jesus.
All three of the Godhead are brought into the prayer life.
You are praying to the Father.
You are praying in the Name of Jesus.
You are praying through the Holy Spirit.
Your prayer is based upon the Word.
It brings this earth heart of ours into contact with the heavenly center of all divine power and activity.
You can't spend any length of time in prayer without being affected by it.
The quietness, the unshaken faith, the deep, unsounded peace that pervades the Godhead, will overflow into the pray-er's life.
Said an anxious and nervous mother: "You will have to forgive me, children, but I forgot to visit the Master this morning, and so I lack His quietness and His strength."
Many of us can make that confession, that our irritability, weakness, and lack of spiritual insight comes from not sitting in the presence of the Master.
One cannot spend an hour in conscious communion with the Father, the Son, the Spirit and the Word without carrying away from that anointed place the fragrance that fills the atmosphere.
There is a heavenly fragrance about Jesus that lingers with the pray-ers.
They are slow to speak.
They are slow to judge.
They are quick to love and quick to help.
There is a holy calmness about their lives that challenges the restless ones; they crave that quietness of spirit.
Again, we cannot spend time with them without partaking of their stability and their unshakableness.
One who is easily disturbed, and who in the jolts of life is unseated, will find a new strength and steadiness that will make him a blessing to the world, by spending just a little time with the Rock of our Strength.
You see, a few moments with Him tunes us up, fills the battery, adjusts the carburetor, and makes it easy for us to face life's uneven conditions.
It gives us poise and holy dignity in our contacts.
Faith makes us an intelligent victor.
Faith makes mountains and difficulties take their true position.
You can't sit with the God of all Faith and all Love, for one half hour each day, without unconsciously breathing in the Faith of God.
What would it mean to you, if Jesus should come into your home as He came into the home of Mary and Martha?
You would take time to visit with Him!
"Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." (John 14:23)
You love Him, invite Him into your home, and then get acquainted with Him.
Learn to talk things over with Him.
He is there; visit with Him!
Remember, He loves you, He is interested in all your problems.
He will make His Word answer every question; He will make Himself real in your life and home.
Prayer On a Winning Basis
He made prayer a winning business proposition.
We didn't ask Him to do it.
We didn't send our representative and say, "Now, Father, we want you to give us certain promises and certain abilities."
No. He did it all. He planned it all for us.
He based a prayer life upon His own Word.
It was a daring thing for Him to do, but He believed that we would believe.
He dared to give His Son.
He dared to give man Eternal Life.
He dared to make us New Creations.
Why? Because He believed that man would respond to His love and that man, when challenged by such grace, would meet it with a glad response.
And so we are fellowshipping Him in His faith fight for a lost race.
We are helping the men for whom His Son died and has redeemed.
Our combat is warring against God's enemy.
It is saving the men for whom Christ died.
It is making strong the weak.
It is giving God's children a chance for winning in life's fight.
We are the instruments. We are the forerunners. We are the pioneers in this marvelous life of faith.
We are joining the men of all the ages who have dared to walk where paths have never been.
We are opening channels for His grace to reach the human race.
We are God's under-engineers.
We are building roads for others to walk upon.
Our faith life has joined with God's faith life and we have become His "tilled land," "His fellow-workers".
We are the branches that are bearing the real fruit from the real vine.
We are opening channels through which He can pour Himself out on man.
Our ministry is not a failure. We are winning.
We are making out of these failure-men, successes.
Our union with Him is beckoning other men to dare come into the union too.
They see failures transfigured into successes.
They see men who have been held for years absolute slaves to narcotics and drink, set free to walk in the fullness of their liberty in Christ.
And those in bondage reach their hands out for help, and our Father grasps them and lifts them up onto the solid rock.
Come on you pray-ers, join this mighty group of intercessors who are making the desert places blossom like the rose.
Come on you men and women who have never made prayer a business. Make your investment of time. Learn the art, yes, the secret of this the greatest business of the age.
Throw yourself open. Let Him pour Himself through you until your home and your business and your associates will feel the throb of His mighty life and the lift of His love.
Let me state it with all the simplicity possible, that you can't have prayers answered without having Miracles performed.
Prayer and Miracles
If you deny that Miracles are for this age, you deny the need, and the privileges and the benefits of prayer.
The two-fold value of prayer lies first in sitting in His presence, or in direct Fellowship with the Father.
The second benefit is the answer that comes to us.
John says, "If we ask anything according to His will, we know that He heareth us, and if we know that He hears us, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked."
For God the Father to hear my prayer is equivalent to His answering it.
Now, for God to hear me is a Miracle.
For God to answer my prayer, regardless of its nature, is a Miracle.
Whether my petition is for a postage stamp or for a million dollars, it is a miracle.
Any divine intervention, any arrest of the laws of nature that comes in answer to Faith, is a Miracle.
If prayer brings an answer, that answer is a Miracle. It is then that Faith has its true place.
The instant that you say there are no Miracles in this dispensation, you deny that our walk is a walk by Faith, and you declare that our walk is a walk by Reason.
I challenge you to find one place where God tells us as believers to walk by Reason.
God is a Faith God.
We are a Faith Family.
We are all born by Faith.
We live by Faith.
By Faith we live, breathe, and have our being in Christ.
If there are no Miracles, then there is no reason for Faith.
If there are no Miracles, God can't answer prayer, because He can't answer prayer of any character that is not a Miracle.
You men and women who tell me that you believe the Bible to be the Word of God, that it is God-breathed and without error in the original, and then, in the same breath, tell me that the Day of Miracles is past, you are the most illogical thinkers, the most inconsistent believers that the Devil ever deluded.
I believe profoundly that the Devil is the deceiver of the whole inhabited earth and of that type of Christian in particular.
So, let us reverently come back to God.
Let us take our place.
If we pray at all, we expect prayer to be answered.
If that prayer is answered, God has done it; and if God has answered prayer He has performed something outside of the Realm of Reason.
We will have to give up our prayer life utterly or we will have to believe in Miracles.
I believe in Miracles.
I believe in divine intervention.
I believe that the prayer of Faith reaches God our Father, and when it reaches Him He acts in response to that Faith.
When He acts in response to our Faith, His action is above our reason. It is in the Realm of Miracles.
For me to deny the privilege and benefits of prayer would raise a storm of protest among those who deny Miracles today.
I want you to see, my brother and sister, as you read this today, that your position is untenable.
Faith causes a man to act like God.
Love makes him like God.
The Supernatural
Prayer is an excursion into the supernatural realm.
You are in the Throne Room in the Presence of God, of All Ability. He has promised to hear your petition and to give you your request. You have come on the ground of His Word.
He said: "Whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my Name he will give it you."
You understand that the words that Jesus spoke were His Father's words; so you come now with the Father's words in your lips, and you are making your appeal on the ground of His own Word.
Taking a Son's Place
You are not a servant.
You are not a slave.
You are a son. You are taking Jesus' place, acting in His stead, doing the Father's will.
You may know that you are the Father's will just as Jesus was the Father's will, because of His own will He begat you.
You are the fruit of His own Word. You came into being by His own power and ability. You have received Eternal Life, His very Nature.
You recognize your place in Christ. You are acting the part of a Son.
The great unsaved world must know what He has done for them in Christ; and so you are taking His ability, doing your part in the saving of men as Jesus did His part.
You belong to a supernatural order of being whether you recognize it or not, whether you have taken your place or not. You have the ability of the indwelling presence.
You have the wisdom that Jesus had in His earth walk because Jesus has been made unto you wisdom.
You can think of yourself as linked up with Ability, linked with Omnipotence.
You remember He said: "And nothing shall be impossible to you.
I know that Sense Knowledge reasoning shrinks from this, but here is where the challenge of grace leads you.
We dare to take our place, we dare confess what we are, we to dare confess that He made us what we are, that we can do what He says we can do because He is at work within us.
We have His Word that He is in us. The latent ability and energy within us is His Who gave it to us.
This makes the prayer life a master thing.
You are not asking for the possible. You are always praying for the impossible. You are asking for things that can't be done by any human method.
You are an overcomer in this life!
Questions
1. The Author says, “The more that I study the life of Jesus, I am convinced that He did not exercise divine power in excess of what every intelligent child of God possesses today.” What is the difference between Jesus and us?
2. The Author keeps saying, “Let me state it again…” and finally he says, “Jesus in His earth walk, as the Incarnate Son of God, beginning with His baptism, lived exactly as every child of God should live today.” What are the points he is wanting us to understand?
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3. 1 Corinthians 1:30 “God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.” (NLT) When we allow our feeble reasoning to prevail, it pushes faith out of the arena. Consequently, the Word of God has little effect. What are we to do?
4. The failure of all Christian enterprises is:
5. There are many different kinds of prayer. What are they?
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6. What do Believers do instead of pray? What should we do?
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7. Prayer has several elements. Three are listed. What are they?
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8. What is evident about a person who is a pray-er?
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9. What does “Prayer on a winning Basis” mean?
10. What is the two-fold value of prayer?
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11. For someone to say they believe the Bible to be the Word of God, it is God-breathed, and without error in the original writings, and then in the same breath say the Day of Miracles is past is equivalent to being what?
12. Complete these sentences:
Faith causes a man t .
Love makes him l .
13. The prayer of Faith reaches God our Father, and when it reaches Him He acts in response to that Faith. When He acts in response to our Faith, His action is what?
14. What is supernatural about prayer?
15. As a Born-again Christian what happened to you?
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