The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the sky poured rain, and the earth produced its fruit. James 5:16b–18. Elijah was effective in his prayer, and the promise of God is that we will be effective too, if we are righteous. The King James Version reads, The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. This shows us a principle, a “cross-out principle,” by which good can be crossed out by a little evil, or evil can be crossed out by a total dedication to the Lord.
Elijah was a man with a nature similar to ours, but notice that he prayed earnestly and fervently and his righteousness was by faith; it was not a self-righteousness. Believing God is counted for righteousness (Romans 4:9). Elijah believed God, and he was righteous. He gave himself totally to being a righteous man before God. He prayed fervently and earnestly, and the result was a great effectiveness in prayer. All of our intercession and prayer will be effective if we have a righteousness by faith and if we search our hearts.
If there are things in your life that are crossing out your earnest intercession, you can become more effective if you approach God as a righteous person, rather than as just a zealous person. You can be intense and also be righteous in your intensity, giving God the wholeheartedness that He wants. If you do not, there will always be a tendency to cross out what you are doing in God by any negativity that is in your life.
Paul wrote to the Galatians, pointing out the effects of falling into legalism; and he gave this confirmation to the cross-out principle. But if you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. Galatians 5:15–17. In other words, you are not getting the job done. What you would like to accomplish, you are not getting done, because two entities within you are warring against each other. A cross-out principle is working. One part of you is crossing out the other. If you would become as effective as Elijah, who was even able to control the weather and bring judgments, learn this cross-out principle and get rid of the things that conflict with effective prayer in your life.
Paul said, But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Then Paul described the works of the flesh, which certainly are a subject for meditation. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and things like these, of which I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Find out what is in your flesh that crosses out the following qualities that should be in your spirit: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:18–23. This Epistle to the Galatians deals predominantly with walking in the Spirit, as opposed to going back under the old legalism of the Law. Dealing with this one objective of walking in the Spirit, Paul says that if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. If you set your heart on God and walk with Him, then your flesh will not rule over you.
Your flesh can cross out your spirit, and your spirit can cross out your flesh. But when they are warring against each other, you find yourself being handicapped. A simple test shows how ineffective you are when you come against an object that resists you. If you exert one hundred pounds of pressure against an object that exerts one hundred pounds of resistance, that resistance crosses out your pressure, does it not? You may be putting forth as much effort as you can, but nothing is yielding. If you do not have enough force to break down the barrier that stands against you, it will remain an immovable object.
The same principle is true in the realm of the Spirit. A church is effective when its people are set to walk with God and when their level of dedication is high. But if ninety percent of the people are moving along in the Spirit, then somewhere there is a ten-percent resistance of the flesh. The Old Testament gives us an illustration of this principle. When the entire army of Israel came against Ai, after the fall of Jericho, they were defeated; and they turned and fled. Joshua then fell on his face before the Lord and cried, “Why has this happened?” The Lord answered, “Israel has sinned!” Achan, one man, had broken the law of God; and enough cross effect was created to defeat Israel’s entire army. Lives were lost through what we call the cross-out principle. After the men of Israel stoned Achan, they went on to conquer Ai; they burned the city and possessed the land (Joshua 7 and 8).
We can learn a lesson from the story of Achan. We certainly do not have to kill each other, but we can go in love to those whose flesh is defeating the church and say, “Let us get busy and find the way in Jesus Christ to crucify the flesh and begin to walk with God.” Once that is done, the whole church will begin to blossom out and do the things that they were not able to do before.
The level of dedication in the church increases through intercession, which in turn makes the intercession effective. When the people first start to intercede, they may not be very effective. But the more they intercede, the more they really press in to walk with God. And the more they walk with God, the more effectively they intercede. The two go hand in hand. Finally, when they are walking with God one hundred percent, they will be one hundred percent effective. That is the way it will happen.
Paul spoke of the cross-out principle again in Romans 7:14–18. For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. As a Christian, not as a great sinner, Paul was speaking about a certain position in which he was aware of the conflict of natures within him. He was simply describing the course he went through, from being defeated by the flesh to becoming victorious over the flesh by walking in the Spirit. For that which I am doing, I do not understand (how often do you find yourself lamenting, “I do not know why I did that”); for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good. In other words, if your heart condemns what you are doing, then at least you know that the Law, the concept of what is right, is correct. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me (as though another drive had taken over to defeat the good intentions and purpose in Paul’s mind). For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
It is often said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Most people would like to do better than they are doing. Many people wake up in the morning hating themselves and saying, “I’ll never do that again—I promise myself. I swear before God, I’ll never do that again!” But they do it again. The wishing is there, but the performance and the capacity to overcome are not there. Some people think that a man has a free will to choose what he wants to do, and he can choose either to serve God or not to serve God. But Paul said, “To choose to do good is with me, but how to perform it, I do not know.” If a man had a free will, he could choose to do right, and he would be able to do right. A man of the world does not have the ability to do what he chooses. He makes all kinds of resolutions which he cannot keep.
The free will of man is out—so what can you do but just come to God and cry, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Then let God work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). The will to serve God comes by faith, and even the faith comes from God: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. Ephesians 2:8–9. Actually, about all you can do is to cry, “Help me, Jesus! I believe You died for me. Help me!” Then let God work His righteousness in you.
Do you really understand this principle? Do you find that when you want to do good, you cannot do it? Have you made resolutions which you were not able to keep? After a church service, do you go home planning to do better? You cannot do better by your own willpower, and you cannot do better by your own efforts. You can only cry out to God, “Be merciful to me! Help me, Lord! Give grace to me!” That alone will enable you. Until you come to depend totally upon God, you will never be able to walk with God.
Paul further said, in Romans 7:19–20: For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. In effect, Paul was saying, “There is a motivating principle within me that is stirring up this old nature. As a child of God I do not want that, so I will not take the blame, any more than I could take credit for walking with God. I walk with God because God helps me to do it. When I cannot walk with God, it is because a devilish principle of sin in my members drives me; therefore, I must find a way to get it out of my life and coordinate my life so that I can do the will of God.”
When a nation is engaged in a civil war, all the resources are spent on ammunition for the young men to shoot one another. If an outside enemy attacks them, they will be completely helpless if all their efforts are spent fighting among themselves. According to Galatians 5:15, if we bite and devour one another, we will be consumed by one another and destroy one another.
If your flesh and your spirit are warring back and forth, and a problem or an opportunity comes along, you will have no energy, no resources, and no ability with which to meet it. You will be feeble if everything that you are is spent on a civil war within your own life. You cannot afford that. Find a way to unify yourself, so that everything within you is geared only to do God’s will and to serve Him, as David said, Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Psalm 103:1.
Paul continued, I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Romans 7:21–23. Paul joyfully concurred with what God had to say, but another principle was working in the other direction. What could he do about that? He cried, Wretched man that I am! He was saying, “What a miserable dilemma! I really want to walk with God.” He was concerned about his ineffectiveness in walking with God—living on a human, fleshly plane and thinking fleshly thoughts.
Paul cried, Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Verse 24. “Who will get me out of this mess, this inner conflict where the cross-out principle is working? Everything I want to do, I find that I am not doing. I am crossed out. I am somewhere in ‘no-man’s-land’ in this battle. I am wretched! Who is going to get me out of this?” Then Paul gave this answer, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Verse 25.
To some degree every believer is in that situation, but to the extent that you come out of it, you will be effective in walking with God. The people who will walk with God as the end-time army of the Lord are those who have been delivered from that principle of sin into the principle of righteousness. The cross-out principle must be crossed out too. You must come to the place where you are totally unified in your drive for the Lord. Matthew 22:37 does not read, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy spirit, but thy flesh shall war against Him.” The Scripture commands you to love Him with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. The carnal mind is enmity against God, but you can come into a renewal of your mind.
How do we come out of that wretched state of civil war? Through Jesus Christ our Lord! The first few verses of Romans 8 describe the complete picture of the victory. Romans 7 describes the problem, and Romans 8 gives the answer. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. That law of sin working in our members is going to be eliminated. We shall be set free from it, and there will not be any condemnation.
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh (Christ not only saves us, but He actually liberates us from all the sin that is in the flesh), in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (Galatians 5:16 says that if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.) For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. Romans 8:1–6.
You cannot continually think about sin and the flesh without it becoming effective. If for no other reason, it is effective because you have given your thought and your mind to that which is death to the things of the Spirit, so that your mind cannot walk in the things of the Spirit. This is not referring to actions, but to an inner conflict. A man can say, “Put me in the stockade, tie me up, don’t let me do these things”; and he will not be doing them. But that still does not liberate him from the bondage that is in his mind. This is the battle every one of us must fight.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. Galatians 6:7–8. These verses were spoken to Christians. The entire Epistle to the Galatians was written to the believer. The first word in the sixth chapter is Brethren. To the people in the church at Galatia, Paul was saying, “Watch the way that you sow. If you sow to the flesh, you will reap corruption. If you sow to the Spirit, you will reap life everlasting. God is not mocked.” You cannot spend your time building up one side of your being without defeating the other. You cannot constantly dwell in the things of the flesh and still rise up to overcome as a spiritual believer.
Compare the war between your spirit and your flesh with an analogy of two caged giants who hate each other and are ready to kill each other. Knowing that a battle is inevitable, what should you do? Each day feed one but not the other, for the time of contest will come when they must fight it out. The flesh and the spirit will surely war against each other, and one will win over the other. You cannot sow to the Spirit or to the flesh without changing the balance. The cross-out principle is only overcome according to the time spent on that which is spiritual. Concerning the prophecies over him and the things of the Lord, Paul said to Timothy, Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. I Timothy 4:15. He was saying, “Everyone will see how you won the victory when you fed the inner man of the spirit and starved the flesh.”
This cross-out principle presents the answer for every one of us. We can intercede all day, but if we have so much inner conflict that the force of our faith is diminished, perhaps only ten percent of our prayers will come through effectively to see answers. We should be exploding into a walk of miracles, exploits, and greater works; but it will not happen through people who have dissipated the tremendous force of God’s Word within their lives in that inner conflict with its cross-out principle constantly working.
The ineffectiveness of your own life is your own fault; and you have no one to blame but yourself if indeed you have been hearing and absorbing the living Word that God is bringing in this hour. It is enough truth to move the whole world. Once your spirit is set on it, all you have to do is crucify your flesh nature.
Romans 8:6–11: For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will (not only make your spirit alive, but) also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you. These verses show what must happen as a result of this warfare between the flesh and the spirit.
As you come to the place where you are filled with the Spirit of God, your spirit becomes alive to God. As that process continues longer, eventually it reaches into the flesh, and the Spirit of the Father who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead begins to quicken your mortal body and eliminate the principle of sin that wars in your flesh. That is why Romans 8 deals primarily with the redemption of our bodies. The redemption of our bodies does not involve the overcoming of the mortal state alone. It deals with the principle of sin that dwells within the flesh and the body. We come to the end of that also.
Romans 8:12–16: So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
We need this scriptural basis for believing that things will change in our lives. Inner conflict will give way to inner victory. The Spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead will quicken, or make alive, our mortal bodies to God. Today, God is restoring the experience of the Spirit filling us. As the Spirit fills us and we learn to walk in the Spirit, there is one course of action set before us—inevitably we must come to the end of the flesh and of the conflict between our spirit and our flesh. Then we shall find ourselves totally, absolutely, completely effective in what we do for God. We shall bear fruit as we learn that our mortal bodies will be quickened by the Spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead.
The rest of Romans 8 describes the glorious manifestation of the sons of God who are groaning within themselves to be loosed from futility into their glorious liberty. This groaning and travailing cries out, “Oh, wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this inner conflict, from the body of this death, from the principle of sin that seems to have such a free access to my flesh?” Our flesh will be quickened, by the resurrection Spirit from the Father, to walk in victory and in the love of the Lord. We can walk totally effective in our intercession as we understand the cross-out principle and do not allow it to operate in our lives. Why let the flesh cross out what we are doing in the Spirit, with the Spirit barely crossing out the flesh, until we stand weak, trembling, and ineffective, not knowing how to function as effective servants of God? Let us crucify the flesh and walk with God. By the Spirit of God we can prevail. Let us come to the end of everything within us that has spelled defeat and crossed out the dedication in our hearts to walk with God. Let us get rid of those things that have made us ineffective in the past and have kept us from moving faster.
If you are tired of being crossed out, of starting out to walk with God and finding your flesh rising up and tripping you, you cannot blame anyone else. It is working within you. End that, saying in your mind and heart, Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! The deliverance comes through the Lord Jesus Christ. Just pray, “Lord Jesus, You are going to help me. This flesh is going to come to an end.” You may feel secure in being a Christian, but remember—Paul was a Christian too; and he taught that the unregenerated flesh must give way to the righteousness of God. To whatever extent it is still crossing you out, refuse to walk in that. Whenever you are crossed up by the cross-out principle, there is only one answer, and that is the work of the cross.
How insidious it is when such a thing as a little anger, a little temper, or a little thought of lust works away on you. After you have been defeated a few times, you almost become conditioned to accept it, as if Satan were saying to you, “You will never get rid of it!” That is a lie, because all you have to do is feed your spirit and starve your flesh. Romans 13:14 says, But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts. Austerity is not the answer; however, you will find that this simple cross-out principle works.
Believe God to lay His Spirit upon you in a very special blessing of victory. Combine this with repentance where you have failed, and look to God, saying, “O God, through Jesus Christ, my Lord, let me prevail. Let me overcome by the blood of the Lamb to do Your will with all that is in my heart and in my life. I believe that where I have failed, I will now succeed. I will now overcome that which crosses out my life, so there will be no more short circuits.”