These series of messages are written about who we are and what we can do. It is a revelation of “what we are, and who we are in Christ”, an unveiling of “what He can do through us”.
It is a lifting of the veil and a revealing of the holy of holies and our ability to enter it and stand in the presence of the Father.
It is a revelation of our ability to stand in His presence on behalf of other people.
It is a discovery of God’s ability available to anyone in Christ—an introduction to “Who and what we are in Christ”.
Much of it may be new to you and a challenge to ascend into the heavenly places in Christ and exercise our delegated authority.
It will enable us to know Him and the power and the ability that was revealed in His resurrection, and the amazing fact that ability which is ours!
It will show us our legal rights in Christ: that we do not stand upon His sufferance (the endurance of pain endured) or His pity (to feel pain or grief for one in distress), but upon our legal rights, claiming them for our very own, and those we pray for.
It will remove the fog that has surrounded the prayer life and lead us out of religion into the light of life.
It will show us the authority of the name of Jesus, and how to use it.
It will show us the ability of the Indwelling One in us.
It will reveal our place in the Father’s family and show us how to take that position.
This is not a message of philosophy or of theories, but of reality.
It shows us what belongs to us and our ability to enjoy all these rights in Christ.
The call to prayer is the Father’s invitation to visit Him. This is more than the consciousness of a great need that often drives us to prayer. It is the call of Love to come and fellowship. It is really visiting with the Father.
Few of us have realized the fact that the Father’s heart is hungry for the companionship of His children.
His heart hunger is the reason for the creation of mankind and the reason for redemption, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16).
That love moves Him to call us to prayer.
In the New Covenant, we are restored to the first dominion. That which was revealed in the Edenic Covenant, the Covenant God made with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before the entrance of sin expressing His purpose in Creation.
We are to have control over planet earth.
That call to prayer is the proof of our ability to stand in His presence. It is the proof of His making us righteous enough to stand in His presence without reproof or condemnation.
It means that we are ever welcome to the throne room.
How few of us have ever realized this?
It is male and female sons visiting their Father.
t is children coming joyously into the presence of a Loving Parent.
He does not demand faith of His children. He doesn’t say, “Now if you believe,” or “If you have faith,” or “If you love me.”
He said that to the Jews, His servants, the men of the broken The Mosaic Covenant.
But He says to us, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). It is the Father’s invitation to the throne room of Love.
Prayer is our need crying out for help. Prayer is the voice of faith to the Father.
Prayer is then born of the sense of need, and the assurance that the need will be met.
Unbelief cannot pray; it can only utter words.
Prayer is the living Word through the voice of faith.
It is holding His Word up to the Father in prayer like a mirror.
He sees Himself in the mirror of His Word.
He has already said it. You are asking Him to do it based upon the New Covenant, which includes the everlasting promises of the Older covenants (there are nine covenants in the Bible), not the temporal ones in it. And all the promises and provisions in the New Testament.
He promised. You hold that promise up to Him in prayer.
You see, God and His Word are One, just as He and Christ (The Living word) are One.
He honored His Word by calling His Son, “the Word.”
His Son, then, and the Word are One.
He was with the Son, and in the Son; so, He is in the Word and with the Word today.
When we quote the Word, we quote Him. When we rest Upon the Word, we rest in Him.
His Word is our contact with Him.
His Word through our mouth in faith is He Himself speaking through us.
Then in prayer we are speaking His Word back to Him. Lord, you said! I always quote a scripture to him.
We hold His Word as a bank holds our check. Just as we have money in the bank to make the check good, God can make His Word good, because he never contradicts his word. Or change what he has said. But there are conditions to some of his words,
So, God doesn’t change, but we change, and when we change, it seems like God changed his mind, but when we search everything that has proceeded out of His mouth, and we begin to understand the ways of the Lord, a new understanding comes in his dealings with us upon the earth.
But people think they know something, therefore they do not seek confirmation.
The Father loves when we ask Him questions, I call it honest doubt, because his thoughts and ways are higher than ours.
The Bible is a concealed revelation, and he only reveals the mystery of it, to those who are willing to do his will, and are his friends. They are the honest seeker’s of His will, and do not lean upon their own understanding.
Prayer then is encountering God with man’s and women’s needs, with His promises to meet those needs.
Jesus taught us to pray. He taught us to trust His Word.
Prayer is a part of God’s plan for us.
He encourages us to act on His Word. He is one who works with us in our prayer life. We must learn how to hear his voice, or we will be confused for the rest of our life.
His spoken word is His way of saving, healing, and blessing mankind.
Jesus said in Luke 18:1, “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” You see, prayer means vital intimate contact with the Father. We learn to enter his manifest presence and appropriate what he has already spoken.
Prayer means that we have come boldly into the throne room and are standing in His presence.
It is more than trying to bring Him on the scene. It is going into the presence of the Father and Jesus in an executive meeting, laying our needs before them and making our requests for ability, grace, healing for someone, victory for someone, or financial needs. Whatever that need may be, we are making a demand upon Him, because of what He has already spoken.
One day when the crowd was pressing around the Master, Jesus asked, “Who touched me?” (Luke 8:45). Peter and the other disciples said, “Master, the crowds are all round you pressing hard!” But Jesus answered, “Somebody did touch me, for I felt power had passed from me” (verse 46).
There cannot be any touching of the Jesus without Jesus knowing it. When need touches Him, it makes a demand upon His ability to meet that need; and prayer is the way in which we touch Him.
Basically, we are disciplining ourselves to have a meeting with God.
We are not trying to do better, trying harder, but to come into his manifest presence which changes us, not him. We are not trying to change his mind, or persuade him, we are seeking to know his mind on a certain matter and then agree with him, which releases the power for his will to be manifested on the earth.
Prayer keeps us in close contact with the Father and with the Word.
It is a constant communion with the Father and it enriches one spiritually.
It illumines the Word and illumines the mind; and it freshens and heals the body.
A strange feature about this prayer life is that it reaches the uttermost parts of the earth. When I pray for a person in Australia or in Africa, my spirit can send to them, through the Father, the blessing that they need today. It is a matter of transference and impartation.
This is the ministry of a priest after the order of Melchizedek.
I speak here, and they are blessed there.
What a ministry!
PRAYER IS A SPIRITUAL EXERCISE
Your spirit is contacting the Father.
Your spirit is reaching other human spirits through the Father.
Paul said, “My spirit and the Lord Jesus will be with you in your deliberations (the act of weighing and examining the reasons for or against a choice).”
Physical sense knowledge can’t grasp this. It is in the realm of the spirit.
We become so utterly one with Him, that we act on his behalf-delegated Authority.
We become so utterly ruled and governed by the Word and by the Holy Spirit that we become masters of demons and of their work.
We cast out demons with the Word.
We pray for sick and the diseases leave them.
Weakness is destroyed by the strength of God.
The very life of God flows out through our mouth.
Do you remember John 7:38 where Jesus says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water?”
Jesus is speaking of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence and how, from our inner life of prayer, there flows forth an outpouring of the very life of God that travels on its way to that one who is in need. I do not yet understand the fullness of this. I am in the infancy of this prayer life.
Electricity has made the wireless and the radio realities.
Electricity is a human type of the transference of God’s life in the spirit world.
Will electricity in the mechanical world be stronger, more effective than the divine nature in our spirits? I don’t think so.
I know that our prayers bring the very presence of God upon people in any part of the world.
You see, this is cooperating with Jesus. God through you is ruling the demons and evil forces all over the world. You become His voice in the authority of his name.
The Word really becomes the sword of the spirit, and it is waging a war against demoniacal forces who rule men and women.
His Word through your mouth dominates these world forces. They feel restricted, bound, hindered, and conquered.
Jesus said, “And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues”. (Mark 16:17) That means rule them, govern them.
God through you, then, can influence the nations.
Now you can understand 2 Corinthians 6:1 “Working together with him.”
How? Through this marvelous prayer life.
You have entered the holy priesthood in your prayer life. You can be God’s voice, His spokesman, His ambassador, His under-ruler in Jesus’s name through the Words of your mouth.
You become God’s will toward a Satan-ruled world.
You are taking Jesus’s position on earth. You are acting in His place.
Once more Christ is set free among men and women.
You remember that God gave to Adam dominion over all the earth. That dominion of the earth was restored to us through Jesus, but it is of no value to us unless we, the body of Christ, use that authority in His name.
That authority was given to an individual, Adam. Now authority is given to us as believers in Jesus’ name.
Jesus exercised that dominion. He ruled the sea. He ruled the fish. He ruled the human body. He made legs grow where they had been amputated. He fed the multitudes.
Jesus did not exercise any authority or ability that is not latent in His Name today.
Someday there is going to rise a people who will take Jesus’s place and bless humanity as Jesus blessed them in Galilee.
Did not Jesus say in Matthew 28:18–20:
All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
Notice, Jesus wanted disciples of the Word.
He is with us in the Word, “the living Word”.
He is with us in “His name”.
He is with us in the presence of the Holy Spirit.
We join forces with Him in our prayer life.
That “all authority” was given to Jesus as the head of the church, and it is for the church to use.
The authority that is in His name is in our mouth. You speak with authority and minister liberty and set the captives free.
He has made us sons.
He has given us his name.
He has given us the Holy Spirit.
He has restored all that Adam lost and more.
We are Satan’s rulers.
We are masters of demons and spiritual laws that sin brought into being.
Why did He redeem us? Why make us new creations? Why make us righteous? Why dwell in us? Why give us the name?
What did He expect us to do after making us all this? Just to be good, people who never face the enemy, who simply read the Word but never act on it, who do not take our redemption and new creation seriously?
Is Satan invincible? Must we yield to Satan’s dominion and Satan-ruled circumstances? No! Jesus disarmed him, we enforce it.
“Have you taken these facts as seriously as your nation does when it goes to war with other nations?
We must face this issue.
We are surrounded by fallen angels ruling our cities, demons dominating humans on earth, and if the church hasn’t authority over these, then no one has.
But the church has! And prayer is our method and manner of dominating these demonic forces that are wrecking civilization.
Every one of us has a position in our prayer life.
God should have no unused members in his body.
There should not be a useless member in the physical body; neither should there be in the spiritual body of Christ.
God has planned with divine wisdom, the body of Christ and the moment that you are born into that body you have your place in which to function.
If anyone thinks that because of lack of training or for lack of this or that, they do not have a position, they are deceived by the enemy.
You have a place.
With that place comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes a reward or no reward.
If you do not take your place in the family of God, in the church, and begin to function, the body of Christ is weakened because of it.
Some have the idea that their special work is to criticize others because they are not doing more.
The Holy Spirit is the only one who has this position, but he does not criticize, he convinces (conviction).
You have no right to set yourself up as a critic.
Your business is to find your place in the body of Christ and fill it.
Until you do, you will not fulfill your secondary destiny.
I want you to know, the cost for staying out of the will of God is expensive.
You may pay for it through sickness, in loss of money or in unhappiness with your family, for you lost your immunity from the enemy.
Take your place!
Give yourself to meditation, prayer, and study of the Word.
Don’t allow anything to stand in the way of your finding your place.
Life will not mean much to you outside of His will.
The big thing of life is to be in the Will of the Father.
You say that you were never called to give your life in prayer?
No. You may not have been set apart by the Spirit for that special ministry of intercession, but I think it would be wise for you to spend enough time in prayer to get familiar with the Father. (See Luke 18:1.)
There are only two ways of getting acquainted with the Father: through the Word and by prayer.
If you don’t take time to pray, you are losing out.
You can’t say that you have no responsibility in the prayer life, for you have.
To see a need is to have a call to prayer.
There are people who will be utterly lost unless you take your place.
You can’t complain that you have too much work to do; you can pray while you work.
You can’t say that you do not know how; you can pray the word, there are plenty of scriptures you can use.
For you to disobey the prayer call is for you to disobey the call of your Father.
Prayer responsibility today is one of the most important things of our lives.
Did you ever realize that there are men and women who are defeated and are breaking down in their business, home and spiritual life because we haven’t prayed for them?
You have been occupied with your pleasures and your dreams; and men and women, staggering under burdens are breaking down, burdens you could have lifted off them.
Let prayer become like you’re eating physical food.
If you are a mother or a wife, and live at home, there are certain duties which you perform every day for your family.
The greatest duty that you will ever perform for your family will be prayer duty.
It may be that it is no longer a privilege to you.
You have thrown the privilege away.
You have ignored it.
It has now become your duty.
You must go back to your prayer closet and begin again your fellowship with Him.
Do it for the sake of your family, the boys and girls, and for the sake of your home and church, and God will honor you.
Children are growing up in Christian homes without the restraining power of God over their lives.
The reason is apparent! Mothers and fathers have failed in their responsibilities in the prayer life.
Parents are to blame for the crime and the lawlessness of the youth of this generation, simply ask His forgiveness, and take up your responsibilities.
In the garden Adam lived in the presence of YHVH.
He had no sense of unfitness or need of fitness.
He was like a child who climbs up into his father’s arms. The child has no sense of fear, no sense of need, for he belongs, and because he belongs, he takes his place; he takes liberties.
But when Adam sold out his vast privileges and rights to the enemy, he was driven away from God’s presence, and a flaming sword was at the gateway to guard it.
That garden of desire with its tree of life was known to all the people, for thousands of years, until the flood came, and yet no one could get into the presence of God.
Then YHVH separated Abraham and cut the covenant with him, giving a promise of the Messiah to come through him; his descendants were also given a law and a priesthood, and they cut the covenant with YHVH through the priest.
God dwelt in their midst in the holy of holies.
No one could approach Him unless he was covered by a cloud of incense and had in his hand a basin of blood to sprinkle on the mercy seat; and that was only to be done once a year by the appointed priest.
Israel was a servant.
The unapproachable presence was in the holy of holies.
The heart of man was just as hungry after God as it had been on the day that Adam was driven out of the garden.
The heart-hunger of man has given us all the religions of the old world, all the religions of the East.
It has also given us all our modern philosophical and metaphysical religions.
Mankind’s heart-hunger is one of their most outstanding features.
But you mustn’t think for a moment that hunger is all on one side.
God’s child-hungry and love-hungry heart created a universe, put in the center of it a world to be a home for His man, and He created man after His own image and likeness, an eternal being, and you know how that man failed Him.
All down through human history is the trail of man’s hunger and of God’s outreaching toward that spirit-hungry person, until the Man, Jesus, came.
The incarnation of Jesus is the master plan of love.
It was God’s intrusion into the physical sense realm where man began to live when driven from the garden.
God unveiled Himself to the senses of the Jewish nation. They had no spiritual appreciation because they were spiritually dead.
Jesus in His earth walk revealed to the men and women of the physical senses who surrounded Him a strange, phenomenal thing: He talked with God Almighty, the God of the Jews, with a sense of intimacy that they couldn’t understand, and finally He called their God His Father.
To them, that was blasphemy, and they stoned Him for it; they chased after Him until finally they took Him before Pontius Pilate and accused Him, saying, “He makes God His Father; that’s blasphemy and He ought to die.”
Jesus paid the price of confessing God as His Father.
But before He did that, He said, as recorded in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
Acts 9:2 is the story of Paul’s being sent to Damascus with authority to arrest any who he found of “the Way.”
“But when some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them.” (Acts 19:9)
Acts 19:23 says, “And about that time there arose no small stir concerning the Way.”
Acts 18:26 tells the story of how Priscilla and Aquila heard Apollos, a disciple of John the Baptist, who had not yet heard of Jesus, and they “expounded unto him the way of God.”
The same thought is brought out again in Acts 22:4: “And I persecuted this way unto the death.” Paul here is standing before the people of Jerusalem, telling how he had persecuted “the Way.”
Paul is again defending himself in Acts 24:14: “But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers.”
Why was it called “the Way?”
By this the holy Spirit means that the way into the Holiest Presence was not disclosed so long as the first tent…was still standing. (Hebrews 9:8–9)
This began to throw light on it as “the Way” into the holy of holies.
But Hebrews 10:19–20 clears it up: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.”
The way that Paul preached was the way into God’s presence.
Adam lost “the Way.”
Jesus came to point it out.
He said, “I am the Way, I am the reality, and I am the new kind of life.”
Now in Hebrews 4:16 He tells us to come boldly to the throne of grace; that means to come boldly into the holy of holies, to come with freedom into the very presence of God.
Now our hearts can understand Mark 15:38: “And the veil of the temple was rent in [two] from the top to the bottom.”
Josephus tells us that wonderful veil was four inches thick and fifteen feet square, made of the finest dyed linen, inwrought with threads of gold.
It shielded the holy of holies so that no one could enter but the high priest, and he but once a year in a cloud of incense with a bowl of blood to make the yearly atonement for the nation.
Now an angel has come and that curtain is rent, not from the bottom, but from the top, showing that God has been there and ripped that curtain apart, throwing the holy of holies open, not to the high priest only, but to everyone whom the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed.
In other words, God the Father is no longer shut in alone.
He can be approached.
He can be met.
But that isn’t all. Try to imagine yourself a Jew back under that first covenant, and you know that no Jew could approach God and live.
Nadab and Abihu were struck dead upon the portals when they attempted to go into God’s presence uninvited. It was upon that great festival day when the priesthood had just been set apart by Moses. Aaron’s two beautiful sons lay dead. (Leviticus 10:1–3.)
From that day on, no man ever attempted to enter the holy of holies except a king. He was struck with leprosy as he entered the holy place attempting to go into the holy of holies, and he lived in a leper house the rest of his life. (2 Chronicles 26:18–21.)
For anyone to touch the ark of the covenant meant death, as it did to David’s friend who dared put his hand up to steady it when the oxen had jarred the vehicle that bore it. (2 Samuel 6:6–7.)
Now, Jesus said, “I am going to be the Way into the presence of the Father. Men are going to be able to enter His presence.”
Can’t you see what that would mean to the prayer life?
We have utterly failed to grasp the significance of the heart hunger of the Father. He longs for our companionship.
John 14:23 gives us an illustration: “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
Does your heart grasp it?
Jesus said: “The Father and I will come and make our home with you.”
He is no longer in the holy of holies.
The sin problem has been settled.
Man has received eternal life, has become His very child.
Now his great heart of love says, “I want to come and make My home with you.”
Can you see what lies behind this?
There has been a restored righteousness.
We have become righteous, through the finished work of the cross.
He can stand in the Father’s presence without the sense of guilt, condemnation or inferiority, and based on this righteousness, we have fellowship with Him.
This is the object, the heart-reason for the entire redemptive process.
What would relationship mean without fellowship?
God could make humans his newborn male and female sons, but if those sons didn’t have fellowship with the Father, then there is no joy for the heart of either.
Fellowship really means “drinking out of the same cup.”
It was like our old-fashioned communion table, where the pastor or elders passed a cup and each one of us took a sip of the wine.
That was a type of communion.
Now the Father has called us into communion with His Son Jesus.
We drink together.
Can’t you hear Him say, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hears my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will drink with him?” (Revelation 3:20.)
Now what does it mean to us?
It means that the last barrier between the Father and the children has been put away.
We may come into His presence now with the same freedom that Jesus had.
Now we can see what prayer can mean.
It isn’t the old idea of getting on our knees and crying and begging God, please help me.
It is a son coming into the Father’s presence for one of our brethren who has been injured, or for one who for some reason cannot come and make his appeal personally. We come on his behalf and ask for a blessing.
Or it may be that we are taking up the need of the unsaved world.
We stand there in fullness of fellowship and fullness of joy to get a portion for another.
This is entering by the new and living way.
This is coming boldly to the throne of grace.
This is fellowshipping the Father.
This is intimate communion with Him.
It is not coming into His presence as the Jews came into the presence of YHVH, or as a not- yet believer would approach, but we are coming as sons and daughters.
We are taking our place.
1 Peter 2:3–5 gives us a picture of our holy priesthood:
If ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious: unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
It is our holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to the Father through Jesus Christ.
That is our daily worship, our daily fellowship with Him.
We always come to our Father in the name of His beloved Son.
We come with thanksgiving; we come with worship; we come with love.
We speak with our father.
Our hearts need to understand what this means.
Our words are the fruit of the vine. Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John 15:5).
And here is the fruit of our mouth: our words from which the wine of life flow.
He drinks from the words of our mouth.
We are saying the same things that he has already said in his word.
Jesus said, “I am that living water.” Now we can understand that.
Hebrews 13:15 makes us know, as we never did before, the holy privilege of speech: “Through him then let us offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of lips which make confession to his name.”
Now we can understand what it means to come into His presence.
You come with your petitions.
You come with your heartaches.
You come with your burden, and He partakes of the fruit of your lips.
Oh, how priceless are your words to Him!
The rent veil, the tender heart invitation to come boldly to the throne of grace, all mean something to us now.
We are coming in through the living way that Jesus opened by His great sacrifice; by His victory over the adversary that made our new birth possible and our standing as sons in reality.
Ours is a two-fold priesthood. We are not only a holy priesthood, but a royal priesthood.
This is pictured in 1 Peter 2:9–10:
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should [show] forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
This is our public ministry.
Whether it be as a layman or a preacher, we are showing forth in our daily walk, in our conversation, the fruits of this royal priesthood.
You see, we belong to the throne.
We belong to royalty, and we are showing forth His excellencies.
We are announcing His love, His grace, His longsuffering.
We are announcing eternal life, His very nature.
We belong to royalty.
Is it any wonder that we have access to the throne?
Is it any wonder that we can come boldly to the throne of grace?
We are entering into the new and living way!