Some of these enemies are very dear friends. We have associated with them for many years, and it will be hard for us to give them up. One of them is a desire to read about the Bible and about prayer rather than to study the Word and fit ourselves for this, the highest and holiest of all vocations.
More than a vocation, it is a privilege, the rarest of all privileges that have been given to us in grace.
I am convinced that the most outstanding enemy is a lack of knowledge of what we are in Christ, what He is in us, what He did for us, and our standing and legal rights before the throne.
To many, this language is strange, but I want you to come to know what actually belongs to you in Christ.
Until you do, you will never have a prayer life beyond the baby experience.
In another chapter, we are taking up what we are in Christ, what our privileges and abilities are, but now, I want you to think of these enemies that stand in the way of our really assuming our responsibilities.
Another enemy is ignorance of what believing is.
You remember that the word “believe” is a verb. It is an action word—it means to act upon the Word.
Then believing the Word is simply acting on it, as we act upon the word of our government in regard to taxes, or of our banker in regard to our overdrawn account.
When Jesus says, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7), you simply act on that Word.
There is no believing without acting, and believing means having possession.
I possess what the Word has promised me.
For instance, here is a statement of fact:
Surely he hath borne our griefs [sicknesses], and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.… With his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4–5 ASV)
I don’t try to believe this—I merely act upon it.
I say, “Did God say that He laid my diseases on Jesus and that God afflicted Him with them? Well, then if He did, by His stripes, I am healed.”
I don’t try to believe it—because it is true. God said it, and what God says is!
What do I do? I look up and say, “Father, I thank you that at last, I have found the truth—I am healed. I am so happy that at last, this great fact has been unveiled to me in your Word.”
Don’t try to believe. Don’t condemn yourself because you do not believe, but learn to act on His Word as you act on the word of anyone else.
If you went to a doctor and he prescribed medication for you, you would take the prescription to the druggist and act on it, wouldn’t you? Do the same thing with His Word.
WRONG CONFESSION
Another desperate enemy, and a persistent one, is wrong confession.
What do I mean by wrong confession?
You know that Christianity is really the great confession:
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:9)
You notice it is a confession here with your lips.
(Whenever the word “confession” is used, we unconsciously think of sin. It is not confession of sin. It is a confession of our knowing that God’s Son died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that on the third day, He was raised again.)
Now, with my mouth, I make confession of the lordship of that raised One. I not only do that, but with my heart, I have accepted His righteousness and I make confession of my salvation.
You see, there is no such thing as salvation without confession.
So, Hebrews 3:1 (ASV) becomes clear: “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus.”
You see, Christianity is our confession.
Hebrews 4:14 (ASV) says, “Let us hold fast our confession.”
What is our confession? Why, it is that God is our Father, we are His children, we are in His family. It is a confession that our Father knows what our needs are and has made provision to meet every one of them. It is a confession of the finished work of Christ, of what I am in Him, and what He is in me.
It is a confession that “greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.”
Now he has the Holy Spirit indwelling him. “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
It is my confession that my God does supply every need of mine according to His riches in glory.
It is my confession that when I pray, the Father hears my prayer and answers me.
This is a manifold confession.
If I were sick, I would maintain my confession that “by His stripes, I am healed.” (See Isaiah 53:5.)
If I were weak, I would insist upon this confession that God is now “the strength of my life,” and I can do all things in Him who is enabling me with His own ability.
If it is a problem of wisdom, I confess that Jesus has been made unto me wisdom from God.
HOPE
Another enemy is hope.
Hope is always future. Faith is always now.
Someone comes to me and asks me to pray for them, and I say, “Was the prayer answered?” And they answer, “I hope it was.”
Then I know it will not be answered, and I frankly tell them. “No, the hoper’s prayers are seldom answered.”
Hope is a beautiful thing when it is about heaven, or the coming back of the Master, and everything that belongs to the future. But for present-tense practices and present-tense life, hope is a dangerous enemy.
It is beautiful, but it is dangerous!
The hoper is always a failure. It is the believer who is a success—and believing, you remember, is acting on the Word.
MENTAL ASSENT
Another enemy is mental assent.
You ask, “What is that?” It is mentally accepting the Word as true, but not acting upon it.
It is admiring the Word.
You may have been called a fundamentalist, and you may have confessed that you believe the Word from Genesis to Revelation, but when it comes to acting on it, you have never done it.
You are like one who knows all the ingredients that are in a certain dish that you have for dinner. You are able to diagnose every feature about it. But you don’t eat it. It does you no good.
The mental assenter is a failure—a beautiful failure, but a failure.
I say, “Is that Word true?” And you declare, “It is true. I believe every word from Genesis to Revelation.” You are self-deceived.
The believer is a “doer of the Word and not a hearer only.” (See James 1:22.)
Jesus described him in that last illustration of the Sermon on the Mount. (See Matthew 7:24–27.) The doer was the one who dug deep, went down into the rock and built his house on it. The mental assenter built his house on the sand.
PRAYING FOR FAITH
Another enemy is praying for faith.
How many times we have gone to the altar and to the prayer room to pray for more faith. What a delusion it was.
You never heard of anyone getting more faith or having their faith increased by praying for it.
Why? Because the prayer for faith is a prayer based on unbelief.
If unbelief were not your master, you wouldn’t need faith; praying for faith is an absolute proof that you will not get it, and that you are insulting the Father by doing it.
Why, if a child should say to his mother, “Mama, I want you to increase my faith in you. I’ve been trying all morning to believe that what you said about that trip this Saturday was true.” The child is insulting the integrity of his mother.
So, when you pray for faith, you are insulting the author of the Word. You don’t intend to, but you are doing that.
DEPENDING ON ANOTHER’S FAITH
Another enemy of prayer is our dependence on other people’s faith.
We become, unconsciously, spiritual hitchhikers.
To every man, God has given a measure of faith; that faith came with the new creation. It came when you received the Father’s nature. That nature is a faith nature.
As soon as it came into you and you became His child, you began to develop that faith.
Just as you develop your mental strength by certain mental exercises, and develop your physical strength by certain physical exercises, now you are developing your faith by feeding on the Word. (See John 15:7.)
You begin to live in the Word.
You are acting on the Word.
You are taking advantage of your privileges in Christ.
HERE ARE SOME DON’TS
Don’t try to believe; just act on the Word.
Don’t have a double confession, so that one moment you confess, “Yes, He heard my prayer. I am healed,” or “I will get the money,” and then begin to question how it is going to come and what you ought to do to get it.
Your latter confession destroys the first.
A wrong confession destroys prayer and destroys faith.
Don’t trust in other people’s faith—have your own.
Do your own believing. Have your own faith as you have your own clothes. Act on the Word for yourself.
Don’t talk doubt or unbelief.
Never admit that you are a “doubting Thomas.” That is an insult to your Father.
Don’t talk about sickness and disease.
Never talk about failure. Talk about the Word, its absolute integrity, your utter confidence in it, and your ability to act on it. Hold fast to your confession of its truthfulness.
Luke 6:46 says, “Why call ye me Lord, Lord?” Jesus is describing the man who talks very religiously, but does not do the Word.
You cannot build faith without practicing the Word.
You cannot develop a prayer life that is anything but words unless the Word actually has a part in your life.
You live the Word; you do the Word.
One may be a teacher of the Bible. He may know the Book from Genesis to Revelation, but if he does not walk by faith, he lives in the realm of the senses.
James describes him very minutely: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22).
There is a vast army of self-deluders today. They teach the Word, they talk the Word, and they preach the Word, but they do not practice it.
The measure that I live the Word is the measure of my faith.
My prayer life is valuable only in the measure that the Word on my lips is a living thing. It lives only as I practice it.
For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. (James 1:23–24 ASV)
What manner of man is he?
Why, he is the new man in Christ.
He is the new creation man.
He is a member of the body of Christ.
He is a son with a legal standing and the ability of God, and yet he lives like a common man.
He has a standing invitation to visit in the throne room any time that he wishes.
He has the righteousness of God, which enables him to stand in the Father’s presence with the same freedom that Jesus possessed.
But he lives like a common man, and when a crisis comes, he is hunting for someone to believe for him.
True, he can pray. He is quite adept at that. But his prayers are but empty words when he might have them filled with faith, born of a real fellowship with the Father.
He is a hearer who forgets, a believer who is not a doer, a professor without living and walking in the Word.
It is a wonderful thing to be a doer of Jesus’s words. This is the real secret of a prayer life.
I don’t know whether it has ever been a reality in your life or not that you are a love creation and, therefore, a lover by nature because you are a possessor of the Father’s nature.
You should do identically as Jesus did.
He did the Father’s will.
He lived the Father’s will.
He spoke the Father’s words.
He was a doer as well as a hearer, and because He was that, the believer has a right to call Jesus “Lord” and expect that Jesus will fulfill a Lord’s part to him in his daily walk.
Now I can quietly say, “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1), for He and I walk together.
CONFUSING THE PRAYER PROBLEM
Those who have depended upon prayer as a means of carrying on their religious activities have ofttimes been driven to extremes because the money didn’t come, or some other problem that confronted them could not seem to be solved, and so they have resorted to using methods and means suggested by others.
The lives of many men of prayer have been a strong incentive to a life of faith on the part of many, and their method of prayer has influenced these earnest hearts greatly.
In my early days, after I had given up my income and started to live what we call a “life of faith,” these problems confronted me.
I heard about “battle prayer” and we tried it. We stormed the throne. We cried aloud. But somehow or other, it didn’t bring the results, and I wondered why.
Then we heard about praying through, and we tried that.
We prayed through our problems.
After a while, I discovered that it was all works on my part and the part of those whose footsteps I had followed, that holding onto God until the answer came or praying hard were expressions that came from the realm of the senses.
It was sense knowledge trying to solve a faith problem, a spiritual problem.
Then suddenly it occurred to me that we hadn’t been acting on the Word.
Instead, we had read the Word, and then tried to force God to do something.
We had forgotten that “No word from God [is] void of power” (Luke 1:37 ASV), and “I watch over my word to perform it” (Jeremiah 1:12 ASV).
We had forgotten John 15:7: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”
The name of Jesus had not yet functioned; we didn’t know, “Whatever you ask the Father, he will give you in my name” (John 16:23 MOFF).
I had never fathomed the secret of the Master’s teaching about His name.
Now it began to dawn on me. We had prayed to Jesus. We had prayed to the Holy Spirit. We had prayed to God.
Now we came to the place where we saw we should pray to the Father in Jesus’s name.
We saw that we are to take the Master’s place, and the Master had given us the power of attorney to use His name.
That dawned on our spirit.
It changed our whole attitude about prayer.
In that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from the Father. (John 16:26–27 ASV)
This brings us into intimate contact with the Father in Jesus’s name.
The earlier verses are now clear.
In that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23–24)
Then prayer is based upon the simple ground of coming to the Father in Jesus’s name.
His love outreaching toward us caused Him to go a step beyond that, and in Hebrews 4:16, He invites us to come boldly to the throne of grace.
The Greek word grace means “love gifts.”
Then the throne room is a room where love gifts are given lavishly to those who love Him.
So, I am invited to come boldly, fearlessly, as a son in the Father’s presence, or as a slave of love of Jesus, into His presence.
You see, there is no battle prayer there. There is no praying through.
I am there in His presence to make my needs known.
PRAYING ACCORDING TO HIS WILL
In praying, the problem came up about prayer being according to the will of the Father.
I made this sweet discovery: that I had taken Jesus’s place here on the earth, and that I was carrying out the plan of redemption in bringing lost men to the saving knowledge of Christ, building up the babes in Christ, setting the captives free, healing the sick, and doing the same kind of work that the Master did in His earth walk.
Then He comforted me greatly by giving me this Scripture:
And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. (1 John 5:14–15)
We know that Jesus was the will of the Father manifest, for He said, “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John 6:38).
Referring to the Father, Jesus said, “I always do what pleases him” (John 8:29 MOFF).
Then if we do the same things that Jesus did, plus the things that He has taught us to do that He could not do, we may be sure that we are in the Father’s will.
And if we are in His will, then we are certain that our prayers are answered.
We don’t try to force Him to answer them.
We don’t tease Him like some children do their parents until they wear their parents out.
No, we come as intelligent men and women, grown up in Christ, and take our place, bearing His burdens, fellowshipping His purposes in saving the world.
We come into the throne room, that room of love gifts, into the very presence of the Father, and we talk things over with Him.
But you say, “Don’t you think sometimes it is necessary to pray all night? Jesus did.”
If we knew the nature of Jesus’s prayers during those night sessions, that might help us.
If you have needs enough that it would take a whole night to cover them, then you should take the night.
But you ask, “Don’t you think that we should keep on praying until our prayer is answered?”
No, I don’t. I think instead we might remind Him and thank Him for it.
Unbelief becomes insistent, thinking that by works of some kind, it can force God to answer.
We are going to act on His Word just as we act on the word of any firm or company. We are going to act on His Word simply as intelligent men and women act on the word of a bank or any other institution that has a record of honesty.
Remember, God cannot lie. He watches over His Word to make it good.
The man who trusts Him is absolutely as safe as Jesus was when He trusted His Father.
A LITTLE STUDY ABOUT THE DEFEATED ONE
When Jesus began His public ministry, He came in contact instantly with demonic forces.
They had wrought unhindered through all the ages. They had held men in bondage. They reigned as kings in the realm of spiritual death.
No one had authority to dispossess them or rule over them.
And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes. And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. (Mark 1:21–24)
That demon knew Jesus, knew who He was.
He not only knew Jesus, but he knew His authority and His attitude toward him.
Demons feared Him.
Luke 4:1–13 is the story of the temptation of Jesus. Jesus proved Himself to be the master of Satan, and the demons must have known of Satan’s defeat. They recognized their master.
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. (Hebrews 2:14)
And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. (Revelation 1:17–18)
Jesus conquered Satan, as we are shown in Colossians 2:15: “Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” This is Satan’s eternal defeat.
You can understand Hebrews 9:12: “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”
During Jesus’s earth walk, He defeated Satan at every point of contact, from the day of His temptation until He surrendered Himself on the cross.
We speak wisdom, however, among them that are fullgrown: yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nought. (1 Corinthians 2:6 ASV)
Satan and the demonic forces are dethroned.
In Colossians 2:15, I showed you that they were disarmed and stripped of their authority; in Hebrews 2:14, Jesus destroyed the authority of the lord of death.
For if the trespass of one man allowed death to reign through that one man, much more shall those who receive the overflowing grace and free gift of righteousness reign in life through One, through Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17 MOFF)
The new creation, who was the defeated one, the conquered one, now reigns as a king in the realm of life here among men, where he had served as a slave of spiritual death.
Ephesians 1:22–23 (MOFF) says, “He has put everything under his feet and set him as head over everything for the church, the church which is his Body, filled by him who fills the universe entirely.”
Second Corinthians 2:14 is the Spirit’s paean of praise of victory over satanic forces. Let me give you the translation from William J. Conybeare: “But thanks be to God, who leads me on from place to place in the train of his triumph, to celebrate his victory over the enemies of Christ; and by me sends forth the knowledge of Him, a steam of fragrant incense, throughout the world.”
Now in the face of these facts, what should be our attitude toward the adversary and his works?
You remember in 1 John 3:8: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”
We are taking Jesus’s place.
We are acting for Him.
He was a destroyer of the works of the adversary. We should follow in His steps.
Paul, although a prisoner in Rome, wrote, “I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 3:1).
He was not a prisoner of circumstances, nor of men, nor of government. They might hold him in captivity, but he knew that if it was the Father’s will for him to be set free, he would be set free as he was in Philippi.
He was not the prisoner of Rome. He was the prisoner of Jesus Christ.
The revelation that God gave to Paul finally destroyed the Roman Empire. It destroys everything that opposes the will and mind of the Father where it is unveiled, where men understand it. Where believers enter into its fullness, they become masters.
What should be our attitude today?
Should we cowardly yield to the forces of darkness?
Should we submit to satanic domination?
Or should we, in the name of Jesus, arise and take our place as sons and daughters of God Almighty?
Colossians 1:12 (ASV) says, “Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet [fit] to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.”
He has given us the ability to enjoy our part.
Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love; in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. (Colossians 1:13–14 ASV)
We have within us the ability of God.
We have the wisdom of God.
God is the strength of our life.
What more can we ask?
Can’t you see what this means as a background for a prayer life?
Can’t you hear the Spirit whispering, “Nay, in all these things, you are more than conquerors?”
Real prayer is inspired of the Spirit, backed up by the living Word. Then it should be a real sharing with Him.
Colossians 3:1 (MOFF) says, “Since then you have been raised with Christ, aim at what is above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”
We have become not only partakers, but also sharers in the resurrection ability of God.
Now He is asking us to share with Him in giving the world the message that will deliver those in bondage from the captivity of Satan.
He is calling on us to become intercessors, prayers, burden-bearers in this world of darkness and fear.
HIS WILL
I saw that if I could get into the will of the Father, I would be stepping into the channel, into the current of His dream for the age.
That current would carry me on into a realm of victory and usefulness that I had never known before.
One day, one of the workers said, “If we only knew where He was working, we would tie up with Him.”
Another one said as he was praying, “Lord, lift us out of this little millpond where we are swimming around, out into the current of Your will for us now.”
I saw it. His will was unveiled in Jesus. Jesus was His will.
Four times in the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “I came to do the Father’s will; I came not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”
Can we know the Father’s will?
We may know it if we know the Master.
Writing to the Ephesian church, Paul said, “Do not be ignorant about the will of the Lord.” (See Ephesians 5:17.)
We are not to be ignorant of it.
This Word is His will written for us.
Everything that helps men toward knowing Jesus better is in the will of the Father.
Romans 12:1–2 shows the threefold will of the Father:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
It is the renewed mind that gets to know the will of the Father.
When we are recreated, He gives us His nature. Then He renews our minds; they walk in harmony with our recreated spirit. As we fellowship the Word, live in it, and let the Word abide in us, we get to know the good will of the Father.
We get to know the acceptable will of the Father. Then as we go on, we will get to know His perfect will. We will swing into it with an abandonment that will thrill heaven.
You say, “Mr. Kenyon, when Jesus prayed in the garden He said, not my will, but thine be done.” I know. That is in the heart of every true follower of the Master.
We do not want our own will. We only want His will. We know that saving lost men is His will. We know that carrying the gospel to the world is His will. We know that teaching and building up the believer is His will.
We know one hundred things that are His will. It is His will that our bills should be paid, that we should be strong and vigorous in our walk, that we should have a testimony that would make people strong to trust in Him.
The man who lives and walks in Him will never pray outside of His will.
I love to think that Jesus did the Father’s will, that He taught the Father’s will, and then He suffered His Father’s will in His substitutionary work.
In the Pauline Revelation, He reveals the Father’s will to us. Jesus, you see, was His will revealed. As you study Jesus, you will know the Father’s will. Jesus’s death and substitutionary sacrifice were the will of the Father. Jesus was the will of God unveiled.
WE ARE THE FATHER’S WILL
When that first came to me, how it thrilled me. Jesus came to do the Father’s will. Jesus was the Father’s will. “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth” (James 1:18 ASV). If His own will brought us forth, we are born of His will, aren’t we? We are born of God. We are born from above. We are His will.
Say it out loud, “I am the Father’s will.” Say it until your ears become accustomed to it, until your spirit absorbs it.
“I am my Father’s will. It is easy for me to do His will, for I am born of it. I have His nature in me. I have the impulses of His own love heart throbbing through me.
“He is love; I am born of love. I have His nature in me. That nature rules me. His love is shed abroad by the Holy Spirit in my heart. It dominates me. I love because He first loved me. I have come to believe in His love in my case. I believe that His love way is the best way.”
When Jesus said that He was the way, the reality, and the life (see John 14:6), that was the love way, and love was the reality of that way.
That was the Father’s life. That life has been imparted to us.
We are born of the Father’s will, born of His love nature.
We are partakers of the divine nature.
We have the Father’s Word now as it fell from the lips of Jesus. We can live in the Father’s Word.
The Father’s Word is His will, so we may live in His will.
“How can I do this?” you ask. Begin now to say that you are doing it. After a bit, it will become a reality to you.
You never rise above your confession. If you always confess your failings, your weakness, or your lack of ability, your weakness and your lack of ability will rule you.
If you say, “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me,” you will rise to the level of it.
You never enjoy anything beyond your confession. Your faith is never stronger than your confession.
If you are afraid to confess that you are the righteousness of God in Christ, there will be an uncertainty about your actions.
You will hesitate.
If you dare say, “I am a branch of the vine, and the same life and love that flows in the vine flows in me,” you will rise to the level of your confession.
If you say over and over again, “I know whatever I ask of the Father in Jesus’s name, He will give it to me,” after a while, that truth will permeate your consciousness until it becomes a literal, absolute fact in you.
Men and women will come to you for prayer. They have not learned the secret. They haven’t any faith of their own. But they have faith in your faith because you have learned the secret of confessing to be what God says you are.
That is all there is of it.
When you dare join hands with God, when you dare to sing the song with Him, that song will be the harmony of heaven.
In other words, when you dare to say that you are what He says you are, then the two of you have agreed and you become a messenger of heaven, and you will be doing the works that Jesus said you should do in His name.