Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel … Ephesians 6:18–19.
Prayer is a divinely imposed limitation that God makes on Himself. He is pleased and determined to move through human channels. The redemption being worked out was worked out through man. You say, “God did it!” God sent His Son to be born as a man; it had to be accomplished on the human level.
At the fall of man all creation was made subject to futility and will remain so by divine plan until the sons of God release it. God is working through man. He is working something in and through man; apart from man he doesn’t work very much. That is why we need to pray; it releases God to work.
Romans 8: 20 For the creation (nature) was subjected to frailty (to futility, condemned to frustration), not because of some intentional fault on its part, but by the will of Him Who so subjected it—[yet] with the hope. 21 That nature (creation) itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and corruption [and gain an entrance] into the glorious freedom of God’s children.
“Well,” you may say, “God works in nature.” Do you really believe that? It is nice to get out in nature; there are traces of divine splendor in all of creation, but you wouldn’t shake hands with a bear. Or play with sharks. There is something wild in nature, everything is preying upon one another. You don’t see God in that. In fact, you see the way the devil works.
God made creation subject to futility, waiting until He works His work in us. You may say, “we’re waiting for that great outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” Yes, and it will come—when we believe for it. Ask ye the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain … Zechariah 10:1. We ask of the Lord rain, in the time of latter rain!
The provisions of God require a human being, yielded and believing and appropriating because the divine provision comes forth on the human level.
God always places human responsibility there; we are responsible to minister God to the world. The anointing upon us can accomplish little or much, according to what we are willing to believe for, what we are willing to pray for, what we are willing to work with our brothers and sisters for. It will be just as much or as little as we believe for.
When God gives us a gift there is Stewardship involved; God lays it before us, and then He requires that we do something with it. He calls on us to give account of our stewardship, what did you do with it?
God is not taking people over so that they can say, “I couldn’t help myself- God just moved me.” He doesn’t possess them to make little mechanical men and women out of them. He is filling them as they yield and appropriate Him.
The command wasn’t “God shall fill you with the Spirit,” the command was to the human level, “Be filled with the Spirit; be filled with all the fullness of God!” The initiative and responsibility is ours. The provision is God’s, and the initiative is ours.
We need to Pray for the leading of the Lord; God will lead us, but what is our part? Knock; seek; ask! The people who get something from God are intensely coming to him. They get an answer because they have persistent faith.
The Lord was faithful in teaching the disciples the place of prayer. He sent His Son to die to make the provision. Then He withdrew from the scene, from any sovereign manifestation, and committed it to twelve apostles saying, “Take it, do something with it. All authority is Mine in heaven and earth. Go and make disciples of the nations. You go and you do it. Lo, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:18–20).
It is a new level; it is a new day. If it pleased the Lord Jesus Christ to withdraw into the heavenlies to sit at the right hand of the Father and henceforth to move through a many-membered spiritual body, if that is what He is pleased to do, then let that spiritual body begin to appropriate His fullness now.
The bread and the cup of Communion is a divine provision. When the aggressive faith of individuals reaches up and they partake of God, His very presence is in it. They draw Him, they eat of Him, and they take the initiative to appropriate His very life into their being.
Are we going to be used of the Lord? Then we start out: we get a leading, we get direction, and we keep drawing from the Lord. As we trust the Lord, the Lord will give us the answer. But we don’t get it all in one piece; we just keep grabbing and appropriating it as we go along. As we grow stronger in the Lord, the Lord becomes stronger in us.
We become consecrated and dedicated to appropriating more of Him. What we give to God doesn’t amount to much, but what God gives to us amounts to a great deal—what God has given to us amounts to everything.
We start appropriating Him; that’s where dedication should come in. We become dedicated to greater possessions in God, to a greater fellowship, to a greater indwelling. And if He is pleased with our dedication, He consecrates it, the fire falls.
So much of our old thinking goes back to legalism, self-condemnation, and to an introspection or self-analysis. We are not going to find anything interesting in us: “in my flesh dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7:18).
“We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God who makes us able ministers of the New Covenant.” And we start ministering, “not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not on tables of stone, but on the fleshly tables of the heart,” until we walk as living testimonies, “living epistles of Christ, read and known of all men” (II Corinthians 3:2–6).
Jesus isn’t going to be read or known until He is read and known in us. We Appropriate Him because Jesus is going to be heard and seen in us. If Jesus is going to speak, He is going to speak through our lips. If He is going to move, He is going to move through our hands. If the job is going to be done, it will be done because we have opened up to be His instruments.
We are earthen vessels. The excellency of the power will be of God and not of ourselves; but that doesn’t take away from the initiative that has been given us. We are not passive vessels; we prepare ourselves, we sanctify ourselves, we get with it. If a man therefore shall purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel of honor, sanctified, meet for the Master’s use, prepared unto every good work- II Timothy 2:21.
We are going to house the glory of God. We are going to walk as temples of the living God.