Reading: Nehemiah
4:9,17,20. Ephesians 6:18.
The Christian life has
very often been likened to a warfare, and the appeal has
been made to 'come and join the ranks and enter into the
battle of the Lord.' But there is an irregularity about
such an appeal, because, while it is true that there is
such a warfare and such a militant company, the real
consciousness of the fight, the battle, the warfare, does
not exist until we are saved and are 'on the Lord's
side.' The unconverted do not know anything about this
battle. For them it is something merely reported and
spoken about, something objective - outside of themselves
and something about which they have altogether confused
and wrong ideas. It is not until we are really in Christ
that we either know the reality of the battle or
understand its true nature.
But it is not just the
warfare of the Christian life in the general and ordinary
sense with which we are concerned here at this time. It
is that warfare which is especially connected with, and
related to, the full testimony of the Lord Jesus. The
general conception of Christian warfare is that which has
to do with evils, wrongs, vices, the things in this
world, and human conditions which ought to be otherwise,
and it is there that the mistaken apprehension of
unconverted men and women is found. They think that to
enter into the Christian army means to go out to battle
with the evils, the wrongs, and the vices which abound in
this world. But when you really come into touch with the
full testimony of the Lord Jesus you very soon develop
another consciousness: that it is not merely evils,
wrongs and sins that you are having to deal with, but
spiritual forces - intelligent, cunning, artful,
venomous, malicious forces - which are at the back of
everything else. It is that warfare with which we are
concerned just now, that which is related to the full
testimony of the Lord Jesus, to His absolute and perfect
sovereignty and lordship in this universe, and that
warfare is not with things but with spiritual persons,
headed by a great spiritual personage, the evil one.
Spiritual
Conflict Implies a Spiritual Position
This warfare is related
to a position. It is a consciousness which only comes to
us in a certain realm. You may be a Christian, and as a
Christian you may realize that you are up against
adversities, difficulties, oppositions, and things which
make the Christian life strenuous and full of conflict,
calling out all the militant features of life, and yet
you may not have entered into the ultimate things of the
testimony of the Lord Jesus and the ultimate realm of the
battle of the saints. But if you come as a believer to a
revelation of the fullness of Christ in His personal
sovereignty and lordship, in the greatness of the work of
His cross in every realm, and then into the light of the
Church which is His Body, you enter immediately into a
new realm of conflict, the battle changes its character,
and you begin to develop a consciousness, or a
consciousness begins to grow in you, that you are up
against something far more sinister, far more
intelligently evil than those wrongs that abound in the
world. You become increasingly conscious that it is with
the devil, directly and nakedly, and with his forces that
you are having to do.
But that consciousness
is bound up with a specific position, and the experience
of believers is that as they go on with the Lord (which
means going upward, away from the earthlies to the
heavenlies, more and more away from the old creation to
the new creation life, and more and more away from the
flesh to the spirit) the more closely do they come into
contact with the ultimate spiritual forces of the
universe, and the conflict assumes new forms and the
warfare takes a new character. It is a warfare linked up
with a specific position to which the believer comes, and
with the consciousness which comes in only in a certain
realm. It is in a fuller measure a spiritual warfare, and
being that, it pre-supposes a spiritual state on the part
of the believer.
To put that in another
way: the more spiritual we become, the more spiritual
does the warfare become; and the more spiritual the
warfare is in our consciousness and in our knowledge, so
we may realize that we have become more spiritual. When
we are carnal our warfare is carnal, and I refer to
believers and not to unbelievers. The unbeliever is not
spoken of as carnal. He is natural. When we are carnal as
believers, our warfare and our weapons are carnal. That
is, we meet men on their own level and answer back their
challenge with that with which they challenge us. If they
come out in argument we counter with argument; if they
come out with reason we meet them with reason; if they
come out with fierce temper we meet them in the heat of
the flesh; and if they come out to us with criticism,
well, we give them what they give us and try to go one
better, meeting them always on their own level.
That is carnal warfare,
using carnal weapons. When we cease to be carnal and
leave all carnal ground, becoming wholly spiritual, we
find ourselves in a new realm at the back of men, dealing
with spiritual forces directly and not with merely carnal
forces. We have come into touch with something at the
back of carnal man, and the carnal man is utterly
helpless in the presence of a spiritual man for the
simple reason that he cannot get the spiritual man to
come down to his level. Therefore he is disarmed, and
sooner or later he will have to recognize that that
spiritual man is his superior. But the superiority is not
just in that the spiritual man is on a new level. It is
that he is meeting not the man naturally, but the forces
behind the man. It is spiritual warfare now. We cease to
fight after the flesh; we cease to fight man; we cease to
battle with flesh; our warfare is in another realm
altogether. That represents spiritual advance, spiritual
growth, and it represents spirituality. And when we come
into real spiritual warfare a spiritual state is
pre-supposed. In that realm the natural man's resources
are utterly useless. They are ruled out, because for that
warfare only spiritual equipment is either permissible or
effective. The warfare then is with spiritual weapons,
spiritual resources and spiritual equipment. So Ephesians
6 finds us in the heavenlies, battling, not with flesh
and blood, but with principalities and powers, but we are
equipped with a spiritual armour, the armour of God.
The
Prayer-life - the Objective of the Enemy
That is all
preliminary. What we are coming to immediately as the
thing of basic importance for us, having seen the nature
of our warfare, is that the battlefield of this warfare
is prayer. When the Apostle Paul has shown us the whole
panoply of God, the armour in all its parts, and exhorted
us to take it up and to stand, and withstand, he, as it
were, spreads the ground under our feet and says:
"With all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and
watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication
for all saints." The battleground of this warfare is
prayer. What I mean is this: that this battle is won on
the ground of prayer, these forces are dealt with and
defeated on the ground of prayer, and, that being so, the
chief objective of the enemy is the prayer-life of the
believer. That is the focal point of all the enemy's
attention and strategy.
Now if we said no more
than that, that is the supreme thing for our grasping and
for our recognition. We have said the most important
thing that can be said in this connection. The focal
point of all the enemy's attention and strategy is the
prayer-life of the believer. If he can destroy that by
any means he has gained the day, defeated the saints and
frustrated the ends of God. The enemy fights prayer
persistently, energetically, violently and cunningly, and
he fights the prayer-life of the believer. He fights it
in various ways. First of all, he fights it along
preventive lines, in the direction of prevention, and
there has to be a tremendous battle and conflict to get
prayer - not only to pray, but to have prayer, get prayer
- and there is nothing in all the range of his wit, his
cunning, his craftiness, his ingenuity and his
resourcefulness that the enemy will not employ to prevent
real spiritual prayer. I think it will probably be enough
for us if we concentrate upon that just now.
The
Battle for Prayer
I am quite sure that I
have the agreement of most of the Lord's people when I
say that one of the most difficult things, if not the most
difficult thing, is to be able to get to prayer and give
ourselves to prayer. When we contemplate prayer we meet a
host of unsuspected and unforeseen difficulties which
suddenly rise up as ambush forces breaking out upon us.
Anything to prevent prayer! I am not saying something
that you do not know, but I am saying it in order that
you may recognize it clearly, definitely and
deliberately, and face the fact that it is not just
ordinary circumstances, but a designed, well-laid scheme
of the enemy to prevent prayer. The enemy, instead of
objecting, will promote occupation with a thousand and
one things for the Lord if thereby he can crowd out
prayer. He does not mind how busy we are in the Lord's
work, nor how often we are found preaching, conducting
meetings, and doing the many-sided work of the Lord, as
we may call it. He knows quite well that all the work for
the Lord which is not founded upon triumphant spiritual
prayer will count for little or nothing in the long run
and will break down. I say that he does not mind you
working. Work for the Lord as hard as you can, but if you
leave out prayer you will not accomplish very much. One
of the subtleties of the enemy is to get us so busy, so
occupied, so much on the go and on the rush with - as we
think - things for the Lord and the work of the Lord that
our prayer is cramped and pushed up into a corner and
limited, if not almost entirely ruled out; and the Lord
will never accept the excuse: 'Lord, I am too much
engaged in Your interests to pray.' The Lord never
favours an attitude like that.
You will remember that
when the children of Israel began to talk about and
contemplate their exodus from Egypt, the enemy's reaction
was to double their labours, that is, to get them so much
more deeply occupied with work that there would be no
more time for contemplating an exodus. Immediately you
begin to contemplate or purpose a fuller prayer-life, the
enemy launches a new scheme for keeping you more busy and
occupied, heaping up the work and crowding in demands so
that you will have no time or opportunity for prayer.
I think that we must
face this quite definitely. Of course, there are all the
arguments about duty, obligation and responsibility, and
it does sometimes look as though to put some things aside
for prayer would be neglecting duty, or failing in
obligation, or breaking down in responsibility, but there
is a place where we have to cast those matters upon the
Lord, and pray.
Now, of course, it is
very difficult to apply that. There are always dangers
about saying a thing like that, because there are always
people who are more than ready to let go of their
responsibilities, or who do not take their
responsibilities seriously. They would be only too ready
and glad to hand over their domestic affairs to someone
else while they cultivate a devotional life. The Lord
must safeguard this word. But we must recognize this:
that the enemy will construct his best arguments about
responsibility, duty and conscience to stop us praying,
and there is a place where, if we see prayer is utterly
ruled out, or brought down to such a limited place that
it is completely inadequate for a life of spiritual
ascendancy and victory, we have to say: 'Lord, I am going
to trust the responsibility with You while I pray, that
You will not allow my breaking away for this time to have
detrimental results, and that You will protect this
prayer-time - which I seek for Your glory - from the
inroads of the enemy.'
The principle of the
tithe does work, even in this realm. Give God His
portion, His place, and you will find that when you have
given the Lord His one-tenth, you are able to do more
with the nine-tenths than you could do with ten-tenths.
That principle works. But there is a battle for
prayer, and the necessity is for a strong, a mighty, a
deliberate and a determined stand in Christ, by the
victory of His cross, to get prayer, to bring in the full
weight and the value of the victory of the cross of the
Lord Jesus to secure prayer and to drive the enemy off
the ground of prayer so that that ground may be held for
prayer. It is like Shammah of old, when he stood in the
lentil patch with his sword in his hand and,
singlehanded, fought the Philistines and preserved that
lentil patch, and the Lord wrought a great victory. The
lentil patch may represent our prayer-ground, which has
to be defended against the enemy in the fullness of
Calvary's victory. There is a fight to get prayer and a
battle for prayer. We have, I am afraid, too often
accepted the situation that it is not possible to pray
just now, or things are such as to make it quite out of
the question to pray. Yes, they will be if the devil has
his way; they will be always such as to make prayer out
of the question. That is one of his tactics. We have to
clear the ground for prayer in the victory of His Name
and of His Cross. The Cross is just as effectual in
securing time for prayer, if we will apply it and use it,
as it is in any other realm.
But we have to approach
prayer on victory-ground. We have to take up this
attitude, and we shall find it more and more necessary to
do so: 'Now prayer must be. Everything makes it
impossible on the human side, but, Lord, I claim in the
victory of Calvary a time of prayer, a clear space for
prayer.' We have to stand in that victory, and it may
mean standing before we get through. It is not
only the many things that may press in upon us along the
line of external circumstances and happenings, to leave
no room for a time of prayer. How true it is that when we
are actually down on our knees prayer is withstood! It
may be nothing on the outside. There may be no doorbells
ringing, no telephone going, nor callers coming. We may
be shut up in the silence of our own room and be actually
on our knees, and then a mighty interfering activity
commences. It may be physical. We may suddenly develop a
physical consciousness that was not there a little while
before, and it will threaten the whole of our
prayer-time, so that we find that bodily we have to take
up a tremendous burden, a deadweight. We may even develop
positive symptoms of illness of which we were unconscious
before. These are facts. And then mental conditions may
come in just at that time which were not there before.
Oh, immediately, what an inrush of a thousand and one
things which have not bothered us up till that moment!
The mind becomes occupied by way of reflection and with
things we must not forget which have not troubled us
until that moment. And what about that sense of numbness,
coldness, distance and unreality that descends upon you
at such times? If you pray audibly your voice sounds
strange and far away, and you seem to be talking into the
air. All these things, and many others, come when we
purpose prayer. They come on the very threshold, and for
a time we meet all manner of discouragements and
set-backs to prayer, and if we take the first five, ten
or even fifteen minutes as our criterion, we will give it
up, close down, get up and get on with something else.
Yes, the enemy is out
to prevent prayer, and there is a phase of the battle
which has to be gone through in order to get prayer.
Again I say, this is nothing strange or foreign to you -
unless, of course, you have not had a prayer-life at all,
or are one who has never seriously taken up the business
of prayer. But I am not saying all this to inform you. I
am saying it to you and to myself in order that we may
recognize that this is a thing which calls us into
battle. It is the warfare of the saints to get to
prayer, and not only to pray through. There is this
aspect of the enemy's activity which is to prevent
prayer, and to obtain it is a battle. There has to be a
standing, a taking up of a position, and a withstanding
in prayer for prayer.
I trust that the saying
of all this which is so true to your experiences will
nevertheless have the desired effect of making you
recognize that in the future your prayer-life is not
going to develop if the enemy can prevent it, and if you
are going to have it and it is going to develop, then you
will have to stand for it. It will not just come. You
will not find that you just drift into it. You will never
find that you drift into a mighty prayer-life, or that
you walk with ease into such a thing. You will find that
there is some making and breaking, some conflict and some
battle to get it, that every realm of things will be
taken hold of by the enemy to prevent it, and all that he
has at his command of supernature will be used. You and
I, dear friends, have to fight for our prayer-life, and
the more we advance with the Lord spiritually, the more
we shall find that to be so. It is not that the enemy is
out to stop you and me from having a personal
prayer-life. That is not what he is against. It is the
testimony of the Lord Jesus which is so closely bound up
with the prayer-life of the Lord's people that he is out
to destroy. You and I, as individuals, as human beings,
do not mean anything to the enemy. It is that which is
bound up with us, and with which we are bound up in
Christ - His sovereignty and His glory.
What
Is Involved in Prayer
Now does it occur to
you, or even strike you with considerable force, that
this resistance to prayer-life on the part of the enemy
implies - or more than that, it positively declares and
proclaims - that the Lord's glory and honour, His Name
and His testimony are preeminently secured by prayer? If
that is the focal point of the enemy's activity, then it
means that the Lord's highest interests are served by
prayer. That puts prayer in the first place. That, again,
is not new to you, and yet it is a further emphasis upon
the fact that the enemy is always trying to get prayer
into the last place. He will try to get anything else in
relation to the Lord before prayer, and get prayer in the
last place. And it does not matter how you put it, or
what you say to Christian people about this, you cannot
get it home to them. 'Oh, it is only the prayer meeting
tonight!' On Sunday night, when there is ministry of the
Word and preaching, you will have a large gathering, but
on prayer meeting night you go into a side hall which
will be perhaps a little more than half full. And yet on
Sunday night you have said that our main ministry is
prayer and everything goes if our prayer-life fails! You
may say anything you like along that line, emphasize it
and stress it, but it does not make any difference. I
must confess that I am often bewildered by the fact that
so many really spiritual people - for so I give them
credit for being - will crowd to preaching meetings and
conferences, but they are rarely seen at a prayer meeting
and leave so few to do the praying in the corporate
prayer-life of the assembly.
Yes, it is just like
that, as though listening to an address were the first
and primary thing, and as though getting Bible teaching
and truth were more than anything else. No, dear friends!
Not at all! All that can only become vital, living and
effective in so far as our prayer-life, individually and
corporately, is maintained in strength and given the
first place. So suffer whatever there might be of
correction in the word, for it is true, is it not? Oh, we
have all been guilty. We all have to say to ourselves:
'Thou art the man!' We do need so much to get the Lord's
estimate of the value of prayer, and if you go through
the Word you will find that He estimates prayer at a
higher value than anything else in His people. Look at
His own life! Oh, amazement of amazement, that One such
as the Son of God, in all that He was, should yet
maintain such a prayer-life! "A great while before
day," or "continued all night." Yes, He
prayed!
And has it occurred to
you that some of the most glorious unveilings of truth
that we have in the Bible came in prayers? Read those
prayers of Paul in Ephesians and Colossians! "For
this cause I bow my knees unto the Father...", and
then he goes on and gives you his prayer, and in that
prayer you have a revelation which is matchless. It has
come in prayer, so that your teaching is based upon the
prayer-life of a man. Your light, in its true value,
comes out of prayer, and there is no light of real value
that is not born of prayer. All the value of truth
depends upon the prayer which is behind it, so that our
conferences, our meetings, our addresses, and all the
truth that comes just remain so much negative matter if
there is not a commensurate prayer-life on our part in
relation to it. We have to pray it in and pray it out,
and I feel that after a conference the thing to do is to
get to prayer more than ever on the ground of what has
been said, and take that up before the Lord. If we did
that, how much more fruit there would be from our
conferences! Instead of having truth in our notebooks we
would have it in our lives. Instead of so much more truth
that we have now become acquainted with, we would be
entering into the working power of that truth if we came
back with it to the Lord in prayer. No one is more
conscious of the need of having things said to him on
this matter than I am at this time, but we are speaking
together of these things and I trust that we are all
taking them to heart. Oh, for the day when, not for the
sake of numbers (for it is not a matter of counting
heads) but because of the recognition of the pre-eminent
place of prayer, the prayer meeting will be as crowded as
any conference gathering! It only needs the apprehension
of God's estimate of prayer, and we shall regard it as at
least as important as any conference meeting with a theme
and an address. The Lord burn that into our hearts,
for that is the preeminent work - prayer.
It is not a great deal
that has been said, but it is very important, and let us
remember the word in connection with the enemy's
determination to prevent prayer. We shall go on to show
you that if he cannot prevent it, he will try to
interrupt it; and if he cannot interrupt it, he will try
to destroy it afterwards. There are other aspects of this
thing, but we have perhaps seen enough to get us into
some very definite place in relation to our prayer-life
in facing it in the Name of the Lord.