God does not move sovereignly in a situation, but He does make Himself available to us. The availability of God in every situation is a wonderful truth. Life creates an illusion completely opposite: we pray and nothing seems to happen right away. It seems as though everything works against us, that we have no control over our environment or the force of circumstances working against us. When floods come to overwhelm us, we sometimes forget David’s cry: “Lord, lead me to the rock that is higher than I” (Psalm 61:2). When we are confined and restricted, then the Lord reaches down and sets us in a large place (Psalm 18:19).
God always has intended to be available to help His people; but because people do not understand this, they do not avail themselves of His availability. A great man of God once said, “Prayer was never for the purpose of overcoming God’s reluctance; prayer is the laying hold upon God’s willingness.” The desperate prayers, filled with unbelief, that try to persuade God to do something, are of no value because He has already indicated that He is willing and that He is able. Prayer becomes effective when you stop pleading for God to decide to bless you. He already has blessed you. He already loves you.
It is not easy to prevail. God tells you that if you keep on asking, you will receive; if you keep on seeking, you will find; and if you keep on knocking, it will be opened unto you. Everyone who persistently asks, receives; everyone who persistently seeks, finds; to everyone who persistently knocks, the door is opened (Luke 11:9, 10). When you have a promise like that and then stop short of it, it is your own fault. It is that persistence that draws forth faith. That is how God works. The Syrophoenician woman with the demon-possessed daughter seemed to receive nothing but discouragement (Mark 7:26–30). God’s seeming reluctance is meant to draw you into the place where you are desperate. Appropriating faith actually becomes the key in the lock that opens the door to God’s fullness. Ruth would never have become the great-grandmother of King David if she had not said to her mother-in-law, “Where you go, I will go. Nothing but death will part thee and me” (Ruth 1:16, 17). There is a persistence of dedication. It is a must! You cannot be discouraged by circumstances. That is the test of faith. Can the illusion of God’s unwillingness persuade you? Will your heart be filled with unbelief because of that? Then you will receive nothing.
The man who comes to ask for wisdom from the Lord knows that God gives to all men liberally and upbraids them not (James 1:5). The Lord never belittles you or accuses you of being stupid. He does not upbraid you for your ignorance. If you lack wisdom, ask, and He will give to you liberally. But you cannot waver; the double-minded man will receive nothing from the Lord (James 1:6–8). You will either receive wisdom; or you will receive nothing, depending upon your lack of wavering and your persistence in pressing in with all your heart.
Are you a spectator, a person of casual prayer? Are you persistent to hold fast to the promises, or do you try to persuade God to help you? Sometimes people stomp and yell trying to persuade God to move, instead of breaking through with the simple principle of persistence to lay hold of His willingness. Persistent faith brings a joyful crying unto the Lord which He never refuses. The indifferent soul receives nothing. He is neither hot nor cold and has no persistence to believe. Although the Lord puts you to the test, you break through into one blessing after another because you persistently reach into the Lord.
Prevailing prayer is an art, because it is always done with faith. George Mueller, who founded the Bristol Orphanage in England, was a great man of prayer. He read the entire Bible many times on his knees. I have enjoyed reading his journal or biography; it has stirred my soul many times. He read the Word of God on his knees; and he applied it always with faith, without wavering. Sometimes many hungry little children in the orphanage sat down to the table when there was no food in the kitchen; and while they were sitting there, praying and worshiping the Lord, someone would bring in the food. When money was needed, he never published a report of the need; he just trusted God. Because he completely trusted God, throughout his lifetime, money and food kept coming to him. People who devoted their lives to listening to the voice of the Lord brought the right thing at the right time. His prayer was based upon constantly being in the Word, seeing the promises and provisions, and tuning in to God’s way of working. He persistently waited upon the Lord. Men who have changed the world have followed this practice.
What would have happened if Martin Luther had not been a man of intense fasting and prayer? It has been reported that he spent six hours a day in prayer, in spite of all his other duties. He said that if he failed to pray one day, he felt it; if he failed to pray for two days, then his family and associates felt it; but if he failed to pray for three days, all Germany felt it. Samuel had the same attitude. He said, “God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in failing to pray for Israel” (I Samuel 12:23). He recognized that he had become a channel of intercession and that only by his continual prayers would the blessings and the provision of God come to Israel. God is always looking for someone to stand in the gap (Ezekiel 22:30). He delights in mercy over judgment (Micah 7:18; James 2:13). He looks for someone who will entreat Him for mercy: and because He has restricted Himself to move through human channels, the appropriating, persistent prayer becomes the necessary medium by which God moves. If God wanted to move sovereignly or through angels, He would have done so; but the word of faith is committed to men. The word of prayer is committed to man, and it is up to us to be the keys. He has chosen us and ordained that we go forth and bear fruit and that our fruit remain (John 15:16). Ephesians 1:23 describes the human channel as “the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.” God has a great fullness to release, but He intends that we be that fullness, that it come through us. As we sense this responsibility, we begin to appropriate and draw it with joyful faith, not with a desperation that tries to twist God’s arm into a state of willingness, but with a persistence before the Lord, because we are the channels He has chosen.
God is very careful to see that careless hands do not hastily grab the roses of His provision. Careless hands may be scratched, and God’s provision will not work for them. God has much He wants to give His people, and He will pour it into their laps. As we diligently wait and seek the Lord, His purpose in preparing our hearts is accomplished.
There is nothing like patience and long-suffering to temper your spirit, to bring you into that which can discipline your hasty passions and nature. “Elijah was a man of like passions as we, but he prayed earnestly and fervently, and God answered his prayers” (James 5:17). Elijah was no different than you are; but because he persistently stayed at it, the answer came. His introduction to Ahab was: “I am Elijah, who stands in the presence of the Lord” (I Kings 17:1). He needed no other title; he knew he stood in the presence of the Lord continually.
Although God chooses to make us the channels through which His fullness will come forth to the earth, yet He insists upon persistent, joyful, appropriating faith. Why should He work in this way? God is to have His pleasure. God’s design is not just to give us a few answers. The whole plan was so designed, and the laws and principles so established, that we could walk with Him and He could have the fellowship with us that He has wanted from the time He first created man and walked with him in the cool of the day. We must continually give diligence to walk with the Lord, but we do not walk as beggars yapping at His heels. We walk rejoicing as His dear children.
Walking with Him, we become His instruments to create the very atmosphere of miracle power in the earth. We read about this atmosphere in Micah 4:1–4. And it will come about in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains. It will be raised above the hills, and the peoples will stream to it. And many nations will come and say, “Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us about His ways and that we may walk in His paths.” For from Zion will go forth the law, even the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And He will judge between many peoples and render decisions for mighty, distant nations. Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they train for war. And each of them will sit under his vine and under his fig tree, with no one to make them afraid…. Let us compare this passage in Micah with a seemingly contradictory Scripture in Joel 3:9, 10: Proclaim this among the nations: prepare a war; rouse the mighty men! Let all the soldiers draw near, let them come up! Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am a mighty man.”
Micah wrote, “Hammer your swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks,” whereas Joel wrote the opposite. Micah saw the day in which the tools will be those of fruitfulness rather than of warfare. Joel spoke of the days of the outpouring of judgment when plowshares are hammered into swords and pruning hooks, into spears. The principal prophecy in Micah is related to creating an atmosphere opposite to the one we commonly know. Now everything pulls us down; but the house of the Lord is to be established above the mountains, to be the chief mountain; and all the nations begin to flow up to it. This prophecy is also quoted in the second chapter of Isaiah.
The day is coming when soul-winning, as we know it, will be obsolete. God’s way is to create a spiritual environment and atmosphere, and the nations will begin to flow into it. The deeper the spiritual life and maturity coming forth in the Body, the more people are drawn into it without even knowing the reason. It is not a matter of having to scratch and struggle to get up to Mount Zion; we simply flow into it. A beautiful upward tide is carrying us, and we discover that a spiritual force is making it easier for us to walk with God than not to walk with God.
Many years ago the forces of lust and sin in the world were less than they are today, yet Christians were constantly struggling against the flesh. Preachers had to preach hell fire and brimstone. It was impossible to squelch the gossip and the bad spirit of a church. Young people would come for a while and then be lost to the world. The downward pull was great. Now we find the upward pull is much greater than the downward pull; and there is less fear of losing people, even when they are pulled away in some problem. The problems are not so much those of the flesh as they are the difficulty of circumstances and the testings people face. Believers find they are drawn up to the Lord.
The problems that churches face now would have torn churches apart ten or fifteen years ago. Now there is hardly a ripple. Why? Another kind of atmosphere is being created. The upward pull is much stronger than it was fifteen years ago, and it is increasing every year. Even five years ago the downward pull in many lives was so great that they were struggling to survive and have anything from the Lord. Now the upward pull to walk with God is constantly becoming greater. There is less and less self-condemnation in the pull upon the old nature, because that nature is no longer as effective as it has been; the upward pull is much stronger.
The mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of mountains. It will be raised far above the hills. What is the prelude to this? We will beat the plowshares into swords and the pruning hooks into spears and enter into warfare. We are struggling against the spirit hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places and coming into real warfare. That is the reason persistence is necessary. We know God is willing. We are not trying to overcome His reluctance; we are breaking through to possess the willingness of God and His provisions. In so doing we can create a tremendous spiritual force. This was illustrated by the school of prophets under Samuel. So great was the atmosphere they created, that it even affected King Saul, who came with murder in his heart, looking for David to slay him. He came by, threw away his sword, threw off his outer garments, and prophesied with the prophets until the sun went down; and people asked, “Is Saul also one of the prophets?” (I Samuel 19:20–24). Yet this was the man upon whom an evil spirit would come to trouble him and cause him to go into insane rages. If the spirit of the school of prophets could overcome that, what can we expect now?
At times I have seen people come to church who did not even know Jesus Christ as their Savior, and the spiritual atmosphere was so great in the service that they would jump up while people were prophesying and speak an anointed prophecy. They sat down utterly astounded, for they did not even understand the things they said. They were simply drawn into it. Some would even enter in the flow of faith and believe God to heal the sick. Afterward, they wondered about it. Of course, after they left the church, it never happened to them again. It was something that happened because the atmosphere was so spiritually charged that it overcame and overwhelmed everything else.
In the future much of the ministry will be collective rather than individual. Ministry over the individual will become an impossibility because millions will be coming into the Kingdom. We are on the threshold of the greatest awakening and spiritual change the world has ever known. The old-order Christian messages and methods are not meeting the need; they are not doing the job. Many so-called ministers of Christ have degenerated into professionalism, such as existed among the scribes and the Pharisees in the days of Christ; and they have exceeded them in corruption. An army of the pure people of God, who are not observers nor spectators, will begin to contend and believe God to create a new spiritual atmosphere.
The day is coming when a group of praying and believing people will go out to minister to a church that is having problems and troubles. They will stay for three or four services, entering into the worship and believing God to create the spiritual atmosphere that will dispel the darkness. Satan will flee from such a place because there will be great judgments on the demons. Oppressions will be broken in an overwhelming way even as the people worship.
God wants us to worship Him and literally create a new spiritual atmosphere. Then we move right into its upward pull.
The things of spirit are highly contagious. That is true in a negative as well as positive sense. If you contact someone who has bitterness in his heart, you too will have to fight bitterness. While the human aura has certain defenses, it also has the quality of a sponge and can absorb a great deal. Unless the anointing upon you is strong enough to overcome the surrounding hostile forces, you will become subject to them. You must become literally charged with the presence of the Lord. This is how you fulfill Romans 12:21: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
A spirit has come over the whole world, and everywhere there is the attempt to demean. At the present time America is becoming self-destructive by that spirit. We are inflicting judgment on ourselves by the spirit within our own hearts. This becomes the key to unity of the satanic realm. But we have something far greater: the anointing to edify. Let everything be done to edify (I Corinthians 14:26). The New Testament Church comes together to prophesy and worship, not to beat one another down, but to build up and edify. An unbeliever coming into such an atmosphere will fall down and say, “God is among you of a truth” (I Corinthians 14:25). We do not come together to get a little blessing to encourage ourselves, but as a Body we are generating and creating the atmosphere of the manifestation of God’s presence.
God is available, and we lay hold upon His availability by our wholehearted worship and praise. The faith for it creates the atmosphere in which all things are possible: miracles take place, and anything can happen. We have only begun to see the potential of this walk in the Spirit. Only two or three need to be gathered for God to be in their midst. He will bind and loose (Matthew 18:18–20). There is no limitation to what the Lord will do if we have that faith and we believe to create a new atmosphere.
If we can create the right spiritual atmosphere, everyone could throw off his discouragements and pull out of every kind of slump. When people have trouble and problems, they make a mistake when they withdraw. Satan rejoices when they withdraw. The time will come when we will hasten to the house of the Lord. The Word says that we should not cease the assembling of ourselves together and so much the more as we see the day approaching (Hebrews 10:25). The key of the miracles will often be in coming together with positive faith abounding.
It always was the Lord’s intention that His presence be in the midst of His people. His presence was manifested by the ark of the covenant, which the priests carried before the camp. They carried it into battle and into the sanctuary. It is still required that men carry God’s presence. God is not present in a special sense in the church building; we carry Him in our hearts. To the extent that we believe and appropriate His presence, to that extent He is present to manifest victory for every believer.