We thank You for Your Word, Lord. Where would we be without the hidden wisdom that You unveil to our hearts, without the food that feeds the part of us that is made in Your own image. We bless You. We do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from Thy mouth, so speak to us; meet us, we pray, in the name of the Lord. Amen.
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.
Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Ephesians 6:10–17.
These are the verses we have covered so far in this series, and the depth of revelation that has come out of them has been amazing. But we take three more verses, which complete the passage: With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit (keep the phrase “all prayer” and “in the Spirit” in your mind), and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. Verses 18–20.
Let’s grasp what the Apostle Paul is talking about here. We have studied all the pieces of armor, largely protective: righteousness to cover the heart, the girdle of truth over the area of the emotions, and so forth. But now we come to something very important, and that is the prayer. With the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, the armor ceases to be defensive and becomes aggressive. We have pointed out that it is the Spirit’s sword; the Spirit draws the sword. The sword is not Scriptures that we use to argue religion; it is something laid in the depository of our heart that the Spirit draws forth, and when it comes under the anointing in the same way as Paul indicates here, it also has to do with prayer.
Pray at all times in the Spirit. We must understand that God has certain channels through which He moves. Almost everything we have covered so far has been attributes, actions, or words from God which we appropriate. It is His righteousness, it is His salvation that protects us, it is His truth; all of it is an appropriation of Him. Now something else is opened up to us: the appropriation of His will, or better, the activation of His will and His promises. The thing that makes all of it work is prayer.
Why this is true must be explained. God’s plan of salvation, redemption, and the bringing forth of many sons to glory is not being carried out sovereignly—the term “sovereignly” meaning that it would be done independently of a human channel. God has limited Himself to move through human channels. God must move sovereignly now and then; at least, it would seem to be so. Once in a while it appears that God knocks a man flat on the road to Damascus and sovereignly intervenes to save a rebel. However, the same man may write an epistle and salute his kinsmen who were in Christ before him (Romans 16:7). Then you wonder: was it sovereign? Or did some real intercession go up from those kinsmen to turn Saul away from the course on which he was going? Was it the prayers of the saints whose families had been imprisoned and beaten because of him? Was it some relative of Stephen who prayed? Then you reconsider: “Perhaps God does not do anything sovereignly; perhaps it is because of the moving of the Holy Spirit.” We need to be exhorted to pray so that God’s sovereign plan can come to pass through human channels, prayer itself being the principal channel.
Do the promises of God automatically spring off the page at you and are fulfilled right there? Or does God move by His Spirit through a channel? You say, “Well, I hear the word and God starts moving on my life.” But someone sought God for that word; someone was praying for the word to come forth. There are many ways in which God has restricted Himself to human channeling. God will not even deal sovereignly in this age with the power of Satan. When He says that the seed of the woman is to bruise the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15), He has already indicated that He will use a human channel to work His redemption and the judgment against Satan. He did not even bring about His work of redemption sovereignly, but He let His Son be born as a human being, in all points tempted as we are (Hebrews 4:15), and so limited that He might die; it is still a human channel through which salvation comes. He is at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us (Romans 8:34). Although He is the exalted, glorified Son of God, it is on the human level that He is making intercession for us. It happens again through a human channel.
God wants to bless you. He wants to do things for you, but there must be channels through which He has ordained that He will move. That is why we pray with all prayer in the Spirit. You see, we have to voice it. The Holy Spirit indwells us, and we know that the Spirit makes intercession for us according to the will of God with groanings too deep to be uttered (Romans 8:26), but it still must come through a human channel. It is coming through you! The Lord is moving in the earth, and it is marvelous, but it is human channels through which the gifts of the Holy Spirit are operating and moving. He has limited Himself to work His great victory and redemption through you because it is His pleasure to bruise Satan under your feet (Romans 16:20). It is His pleasure that the sons will come forth, led by the Spirit of God; once again, human channels led by the Spirit of God will loose creation from its vanity and futility.
With this idea in mind, we begin to realize how much initiative is ours and how much is God’s. God has given the initiative, but He still throws it into your lap. He is saying, “You draw nigh to Me, and I will draw nigh to you. Humble yourself, and I will exalt you” (James 4:8, 10). It won’t work unless you follow the principles and meet the conditions, and dare to become that human channel through which God can move. There may be evidences of God moving sovereignly apart from a human channel, but I cannot be sure about them. I cannot say I came into Christ because the Lord simply spoke to me and I accepted Him; there was someone else who spoke the word, who was the messenger and the mouthpiece, who loved me and helped me.
If we see that today, we can understand the great army of the Lord, the Body of Christ, and we will realize that everything God will bring forth in the earth He will bring forth through His many-membered Body. He is coming to be glorified in His saints (2 Thessalonians 1:10), and His coming forth in us must be the prelude to all that will come to pass. And if that is the case, will there be any deliverance in the earth, any judgments in the earth, any establishment of the Kingdom apart from God using channels such as you and me? You cannot say, “Well, maybe the Lord will move on me tonight.” You do not go to church to meet God; you bring God to church with you. You are the Church; His presence dwells within you. You are His temple. You are the one who has the faith to release His provision. When the sick are healed, it will be a word through your mouth or the power of God through your hands that does it. You might say, “But God is doing it.” Of course! But we are the channels, and there must be the initiative of faith.
One of the most important keys that will help you win your victories is in this verse: With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints … Why? Because in the Spirit you can pray a prayer and turn God loose in a situation. You may pray a great deal, but be sure you pray in the Spirit.
In 1 Corinthians 14 Paul says, “I will pray in the Spirit and I will pray with my understanding also; I will sing in the Spirit and I will sing with my understanding also” (1 Corinthians 14:15). This does not mean that be prayed in tongues and also prayed in his own language with his understanding. He is referring to a certain kind of prayer. The theme of the entire chapter is this: “Desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy.” He is talking about singing psalms, but singing psalms prophetically; he is talking about the spirit of prophecy. He discourages that which escapes our intelligence, which would mean tongues. When a man speaks in tongues, it will bypass his conscious mind as far as understanding is concerned, unless there is a gift of interpretation, in which case Paul says it is permissible. In other words, the Spirit might come through, mechanically, when someone prays in tongues, Paul wanted something more than that. He wanted the understanding, the interpretation. “Pray in the Spirit, but pray with your understanding also.” Both of them must be working, so that when you pray in the Spirit, you are speaking prophetically with revelation and with a word of wisdom in that prayer.
The changes that will come to pass in the earth will come to pass because we have the revelation as sons of God, and we move in, praying prophetically, loosing in the Spirit, praying at all times with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. Pray at all times in the Spirit, being alert and persevering for all of the saints in it, loosing them. There can be a great deal of difference between the two, when someone prays in the Spirit and when he prays only with his own understanding. It has to be that human initiative is given a place to voice the Spirit.
It is very important for you to be led by the Spirit of the Lord and to have the initiative to move in the Spirit. The spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets (1 Corinthians 14:32), which means God has put within us the Holy Spirit, and His moving through us can be at the initiative of our faith. Once again, the sovereignty of God is channeled through human initiative and through human vessels who move in faith.
Could this principle be abused? Could we move God into a situation that was wrong? If that were not possible, 1 Corinthians 14 would not be necessary. Someone could speak in tongues and it would be the Holy Spirit, but people would say he was mad if it were not in divine order. Paul said, “This is the rule you follow: speak in tongues by two, at the most three, and let someone interpret” (1 Corinthians 14:27). Does that mean that if more than two or three speak and no one interprets, it is not of God? No! It is of God, but there are guidelines laid down because human initiative is at stake. You can do it; you can do it right or you can do it wrong. You can follow the guidelines or you can choose not to. You can cry out from your own emotions or you can reach into the mighty leading of the Holy Spirit. It is the difference between immaturity and maturity. As many as are led by the Spirit, they are the sons (Romans 8:14).
You can say, “I bless you, my brother,” to someone, and he will be blessed. But when the Spirit of the Lord comes through in it, you can say, “In the name of the Lord, I bless you,” and there will be a difference. The Spirit of the Lord comes through and freights the words that you speak; and when you pray, when you give a blessing, it can be in the Holy Spirit. When you pray in tongues, some blessing comes through; but when you say, “I bless you for the ministry that God has given you, for the riches of His grace to be heaped upon you,” the blessing you impart is even greater. We must learn, then, to pray with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit at all times. The Holy Spirit is the One who keeps praying, but it is human initiative and human consciousness that throws the switch so that the Spirit’s intercession is activated. Without that human initiative, you are missing a great deal of what God wants to do in your life.
What can God judge you for, in the final analysis? Can He judge you for how many revelations you had, for whether or not you performed all the miracles you could have performed, or preached all of the sermons you could have preached? He cannot. He must judge Himself for His own actions; He can only judge you for your faithfulness as a steward of what He has deposited within you. Did you take the initiative as a steward? Did you know that it was in your hands to give it? Did you know that it was within your heart to cry out in faith and release the Spirit of God in a situation? If you knew that and did not do it, then you are judged for your unfaithfulness as a steward of the mysteries of God (1 Corinthians 4). God has made a deposit in you, and with it He has given you a great responsibility.
In a sense, you become a co-creator with Him of a new creation. You are the one who reaches into God and looses. He says, “What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). “Whatsoever you ask when you pray, believe that you have received it, and you shall have it” (Mark 11:24). We must understand that not much will happen unless we sense our initiative in it. When you determine to pray with all prayer and supplication, praying in the Spirit at all times, you have the key to making it happen. And if instead of begging God to do something when we pray, we let the Holy Spirit bring a prayer that turns loose the fulfillment because God has provided it, I think we will have a better and far more effective prayer life. Does this word disturb you? We could not say, “There will never be anything done unless we get with it,” because God can do anything, and although He is pleased to move through channels such as you and me, we might be presumptuous if we went so far as to say He would never move except that He had you and me or some person as a channel. There is a Scripture which is sometimes questioned by translators as whether it should be in the Scriptures or not, but I think it should be. John 5:4 says that at the pool of Bethesda, an angel came and stirred the water. If the Lord didn’t have anyone else, He might send an angel down to get the job done. But He has not committed this age, Hebrews 2:5 says, to angels. He has not committed this gospel to angels; He has not committed the bringing forth of a new creation to angels. He entrusted it all to us. He said, “Go and minister it. Proclaim it! And lo, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:19–20). I would like to move in more, wouldn’t you? And if so much of it is up to us, we had better get moving.
When you face a situation, do you face it hopelessly? There may be things you have been praying about for years that have not happened. Nevertheless, in your finite wisdom, wisdom so limited, if you still believe you are being led by the Spirit of the Lord, don’t become discouraged; keep on prophesying. Refine and filter out the things of your own nature that would try to use God for your own personal advantage and become what we are talking about in this message: the channel through which He can release His power in purity, without selfish motivation, without ambition. You are content to see what God wants to bring forth, and then you become the channel of faith to voice it and see it come to pass.
Remember faith is passive until it is expressed. You believe in your heart, but the minute that you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, you are saved (Romans 10:10). That activates it. You do not say, “I will go up to heaven to bring Him down; I will go into the abyss to bring Him up,” for the word is nigh thee, in thy heart and in thy mouth (Romans 10:6–9). You just speak the word and add the ingredient of faith. You do not simply give mental assent to a truth; you must act on it. When you believe it, then you speak, and by acting upon it you release it. That is exactly what you are doing when you pray in the Spirit; you are vocally activating the faith and the anointing that are within you. The anointing, the faith, and the word are there, and by the leading of the Holy Spirit you speak forth that prayer. There is nothing we should strive for more than to speak in God: to speak the word of the Lord.
God help us to be loosed from the old ambition that causes us to pray prayers because we know that it will better our position. Is there something that we want, that we secretly desire or covet, but that is not in the will of the Lord? God deliver us from that, until we are praying only for His will and want to be a channel for His will. If we pray according to His will, we know that we have the petition we have desired of Him, because He is in it (1 John 5:14–15). He is looking for someone who will pray in His will.
Was creation a sovereign act? Before everything was made, something had to be sovereign. It would be the sovereign act of God. And then we must ask: did He let any of it stand as a good thing? Suppose that originally He began creation as a sovereign act. Ultimately, in eternity, will it be perfected only by the sovereign act of God? He had to bring all creation into subjection to futility, in the hope and anticipation of the sons of God liberating it (Romans 8). So the new creation that will ultimately come forth in its perfection was not His ultimate goal; before creation could come forth complete, He had to have man participate in it. Think how He loves us. He says, “Come and be identified with Me. Suffer with Me and you will reign with Me. I want you to be joint heirs with Me” (Romans 8:17). That does not detract from God, it glorifies Him all the more to think that He loved us so much. He doesn’t need us at all. But if He wants us in the act that much, I rejoice in it, and the least that I can do is to get into the Spirit, pray in the Spirit, and be a little channel through which His plan can come forth.
We should have more prayer concerning the word that is ministered. Remember, that is the way this text ends. Even though Paul is bringing the word, he says, “And pray for me, that utterance may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.” There is an interrelationship of all the human channels that God is bringing forth into sonship. We must be burdened for each other; it cannot be any other way. There are many Scriptures you can quote, such as the Aaronic benediction: The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make His face to shine upon thee … and give thee peace. Numbers 6:24–26. But suppose you become a channel when you say, “The Lord lift up His face upon thee and smile upon thee and give thee peace.” Then there is a flow.
He said to preach the Word; He didn’t mean to preach about the Word, but to speak it forth as a human channel of the Word of God. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; If any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth … 1 Peter 4:11. So Christ is glorified in all. Oh, I want to be that kind of minister. It may sound like only a subtle difference, but it is the difference between all that God is going to do and just speaking words that have so little in them.
The sons of God will never come to the place where they do not have a will of their own, and this is the reason Paul said, “let this mind be in you which was also in Christ” (Philippians 2:5). He also wrote about the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2) and being in all ways conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29). Of course we do not want our will to be in conflict. We want to be so in accord with Him that we see His will, and, with the strongest will we’ve ever had, we say, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!” Our cry is, “We will do Thy will. Oh, Lord, we come to do Thy will.”