In Acts 12 is a story of Herod, who was eaten of worms, and an illustration of the importance of Body unity and agreeing in prayer.
Now about that time Herod the king laid hands on some who belonged to the church, in order to mistreat them. And he had James the brother of John put to death with the sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. Acts 12:1–3a. He wanted to preserve him until after the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and then he would kill him also. But something happened, and this is the important point: prayer was made by the church.… but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God. Acts 12:5b.
The story is familiar. The angel led Peter out of prison, and he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John who was called Mark. When he arrived there, he knocked at the door, and Rhoda the servant-girl came. She ran and told those who were praying that it was Peter, but they would not believe it. They finally decided that it must be Peter’s spirit. They would not believe in what they had done.
Now this is what the Lord was showing me, and you will find it to be true, again and again: “If two of you shall agree as touching anything you shall ask in My name, it will be done (Matthew 18:19). Agreement can be a strong as faith. Apparently they did not have enough faith to believe that God would get Peter out of jail, but they kept agreeing in prayer. James was slain, but Peter was not. Peter escaped.
Satan through Herod was hitting at the key apostles who were opening the whole Church age. Peter, James, and John, from the very beginning, were in the inner circle of disciples chosen for revelation. Peter opened the door for the Gentiles, and he was responsible for his Epistles, and I think he was basically responsible for the Gospel of Mark as well, for Mark was very closely associated with Peter. And God gave to John the revelation for the Gospel and the three epistles and the book of Revelation. These men had opened up fabulous areas to the Church. It seems such a waste that James was slain with the sword.
The Church may not have had the strongest faith, for they were terrified and filled with fear. They could not believe that the Lord would really answer their prayer. They certainly were not having that prayer which expected Peter to walk through the door. Although they did not have that faith, it is very evident they were in agreement. What unity the Church had! God counted that unity so pleasing to Him (that the body would function as one), that the angel came to let Peter out. Not only that, but the chapter ends with Herod’s downfall. He was making a speech, and the people of Tyre and Sidon, trying to gain favor, flattered him crying, “This is a god speaking,” because they had been in disfavor with him. Then Herod was smitten and eaten by worms, and he died. But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied. Acts 12:24.
The reason the early Church was so effective was that they had a spiritual unity. We may not have the greatest faith in the world. We may be assaulted. But we will do as Ephesians the fourth chapter says. We will endeavor to keep that unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (verse 3). Later in that chapter it says that through the apostolic gift ministries—apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers—we come to the place where we are all built up; we come to the unity of the faith, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (verses 11–13). If we have not measured up to that unity of the faith yet, we still can abide in a unity of the Spirit. We stay in the unity of the Spirit until we come into that unity of the faith. That is the quickest way there is to become a force to be reckoned with. We can have people who are weak on the outskirts of the camp. We can have those who are not settled yet; their faith is not strong. But if we can get them to be dedicated to walk as one before the Lord, the Lord will do something for them.
In the Scriptures there are a number of times where faith may be mentioned, but it speaks of the agreement, of two or three agreeing, touching anything that they ask it will be done. If prayer can be made in agreement, how God will honor it! We have not yet seen what can happen in a single service if the people would come together with a common expectation and a unity of the Spirit. If we ever achieve that, we will break through into the realm of unbelievable miracles.
I … entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1–3. God honors that unity. There is something in the heart of God that loves unity and oneness. God never says, “I am three.” It remains for theologians to say that. The Lord our God is one Lord. Deuteronomy 6:4b. When the Holy Spirit is moving, He is not inspiring sermons about the Holy Spirit. After the Holy Spirit was given the disciples went everywhere preaching that Jesus was risen from the dead and He was the Lord. The Spirit was magnifying the Lord. When the Lord was on earth He was always glorifying the Father. And whenever the Father spoke He said, This is my beloved Son: hear him. Mark 9:7b.
There was always that mutual oneness. You never hear a voice from heaven saying, “I am God, and there is none else.” That is an Old Testament representation of a triune God. It is not one aspect of God. You say, “I can’t understand three aspects of God.” Then how will you comprehend the seven spirits of God mentioned in the book of Revelation (3:1)?
The Lord says, “I don’t want you to be so many individuals, but I want you to come and confess that you are one. Stand before Me as one. Keep that unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This is not a sermon; in a sense it is a message from the Lord because this is what we are going through. Satan is attacking the individual to try to distract him into a battle on a Satan versus the individual basis. Satan hates unity. He tries to distract you in your warfare until you feel: “This is my battle.”
We are going to beat Satan. Any one person’s battle will be everyone’s battle. We will not break the unity of the Spirit; we will keep it in the bond of peace. When one has a problem we will all join with him. Suppose Satan is hitting you in your body: that is an individual matter. You may notice a tendency to accidents, a great attempt to break down the immunity and the protections you have. What is Satan trying to do? He is trying to pull you away from the body. He says, “Come on, don’t be a body. Come out and fight. You are supposed to have so much faith; come out here; take dominion over me.” What will happen? While you spend three or four months battling Satan on an individual basis for the thing that God wants, it becomes the delay that Satan wants. If you win your battle and come back saying, “I won it. It took me three months, but I still won.” You lost three months.
We cannot afford to lose a single day. We have to proclaim, “Lord, my brother’s need is my need.” We must assume the warfare for one another in the name of the Lord. When a brother is going through something, we meet that in the faith and the unity in the Body. God honors that unity of the Spirit. This is like a revelation to me. I had never before fully seen how God smiles on unity, even when faith might be weak as it was in Acts 12. God smiled on the fact that they declared before Him they were going to be one.
You can have confusion and many other problems, but if you say, “I don’t care what happens; I am one with the Body; I will endeavor to keep that unity of the Spirit, no matter what happens,” God will smile on you and bless you, and you will have a force that will defeat principalities and powers. God has ordained that Satan and principalities are going to be defeated through the Body. Ephesians says that. To the principalities and the hosts in the heavens God will manifest His manifold wisdom through the Church (Ephesians 3:10), not through individuals. It is God’s pleasure to bruise Satan. And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet… Romans 16:20. The your is plural, not just your, singular, but everyone’s. They are everyone’s feet. The defeat of Satan will be a Body function. What should you do? Get away from the individual approach to warfare, and more and more come together to voice the victory in unity.
If you are having problems, you should cast your cares upon the Lord. To do that means that you are assuming that God is moving through the Body. In effect, you come and say, “I cast my cares upon the Body, upon the Lord to be met through the united faith of us all.” In a sense it is more than just trusting in your own faith. That can have an arrogant twinge in it until the devils do not come out when you try to cast them out (that can really set you back). But if you can believe in the faith of your brothers who are standing with you, and you can agree with them, you have a force that is multiplied. It is a synergistic action.
Synergistic action is a term used in chemistry, but it is also a term which can be used in any other realm. We are more familiar with it in the mixing of drugs or chemicals. Certain compounds may not be of much use individually, but combined together they can change in actual form and appearance. When two parts of hydrogen are combined with one part of oxygen, they cease to be two gases; they become water. Water can do things that hydrogen and oxygen cannot do. Certain chemicals can be perfectly safe in themselves, but when they are put together, and if you drop a match, there can be an explosion. That is the power of synergistic action.
One shall chase a thousand, and two shall put ten thousand to flight (Deuteronomy 32:30). If the Lord can bring us to be more than just passively agreeable, if we come to the place where we are one with our brother, we start multiplying with no end to the effectiveness of the faith that we have. This is the reason we must prophesy and agree. We will gain another step of victory. We will not just be in unity, but we will learn how to use that unity in God’s pattern for it and move the world. We could move the world with the unity of the faith.
In the days when we did not have this unity, intercession was based upon individuals praying for individuals. That was the order and the rule of the day. I have been praying about this for some time. One of the things that triggered it off was a young pastor who called me in desperation. He was really going through it. He said he had his entire church praying for me because he thought that the apostle was more important than he, but he was ready to go under. I told him to have them pray for him.
It is good for you to pray for me. But the whole body should be praying for me, and not only that; the whole body should have the burden that the intercession is the body praying in unity for everything which comes up against anyone or any segment of the body anywhere. The intercession in unity is now stronger. The whole body making one prayer in unity for me will be more effective than individuals who get into the battle and are wiped out, afflicted, and hit. I have never believed that the intercession should go on year after year with people continually being wiped out. That had to be a stopgap until the real effectiveness of the unity came. Let us take this as an apostolic word and begin to pray.
One pastor spends the greater part of his intercession praying for me. He will not pray for himself; he prays for me. I think that is excellent, but this new vision is replacing this as it was in the former days. Now we band together, and we learn how to pray things into being and get a final answer and have it resolved once and for all, that the breakthroughs begin to come. We are tired of that intercession which is just a stopgap measure: where we pray and pray to hold back the infirmity and keep back the assault. If we begin to voice something with real agreement, we could do more in a ten second prayer than we could do individually in months and years. God will honor the unity of agreement. This is a real apostolic guideline for the future in our intercession.
If you would like to voice something which you have been interceding about for years, and you would like it to become the prayer and intercession of the entire Body, submit it and say, “No longer is it my burden. From now on the whole Body agrees,” and you will see action in the name of the Lord.