One who read part of this manuscript asked, “What is the object of this book?”
I answered by asking him a question: “What do you think the object is?”
He said, “To produce faith.”
Here are a few things that have been covered in other parts of this book, but I want to bring them together so that you may intelligently check your own life and settle some great issues for yourself.
First, it is necessary to know the integrity of the Word, to know that this Word is actually what it declares itself to be: a revelation from God to us.
We should know that it is God speaking to us. It is not only a Book of the past and future, but it is a Book of now, that it is a God-breathed, a God-indwelt, and a God-inspired message.
Second, it is necessary for us to know the actual reality of our redemption in Christ—not as a doctrine, not as a philosophy, but as an actual redemption out of the authority of Satan—and that by the new birth, we have been translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love, or, in other words, into the very family of God.
Satan’s dominion over us as a new creation is ended. Jesus is the Lord and head of this new body.
Satan is a defeated foe over whom we reign through the name of Jesus.
Satan has lost his dominion over our bodies, over our minds, over our finances, and over the circumstances of life.
When we know this, as we know that four plus four equals eight, the problem of faith will never bother us.
Third, it is necessary for us to know the reality of the new creation, to know the legal side of it, that in the mind of justice, we were created in Christ Jesus when He was recreated after He had been made sin as our substitute.
We should know that vitally, the moment we accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior and confessed Him as our Lord, God recreated us and made the legal thing a reality. We have today in our spirits the very nature and life of God.
It is not an experience.
It is not a religion.
It is not joining a church.
But it is an actual birth of our spirits. We are the very sons and daughters of God Almighty.
We know this thing just as we know hunger and its satisfaction, as we know heat and cold.
We know that we have passed out of Satan’s dominion, spiritual death, into the realm of life through Jesus Christ.
We know it!
What will be the effect of this knowledge?
Why, God is your very Father and you are His very child.
You have as much freedom in His fellowship as Jesus had in His earth walk, and the Father loves you even as He loved Jesus.
Fourth, we must know the reality of our righteousness in Christ.
There is no theory about this.
We know that Romans 3:26 (ASV) is a reality: “That he might himself be just [righteous], and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”
God the Father became our righteousness when He imparted to us His own nature, eternal life, in the new creation.
Jesus became our righteousness the moment we took Him as our Savior and confessed Him as our Lord.
He then became our sponsor, our Lord, our Head, our very life.
But in that great revelation, the Holy Spirit, through Paul, says, “Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ASV).
Not only is Jesus our righteousness, and the Father our righteousness, but we have become “the righteousness of God” in Him.
This means that our standing before the throne is a standing sponsored by God Himself, and by His Son, by His own works wrought in us, and by the Holy Spirit, through the Word.
We are what He says we are.
This means we can stand in His presence without any sense of guilt, condemnation, or inferiority.
This means that the prayer problem is settled. We are no longer going into His presence tongue-tied because of condemnation or fear-filled because of ignorance.
We know what we are in Christ.
We know that He made us what we are.
It is not a problem of feeling or a problem of faith.
This does not require faith any more than Jesus required faith to go into the presence of His Father.
Jesus was, and we are.
Fifth, it is necessary for us to know the reality of indwelling.
Of all the mighty truths connected with redemption, this is the climax: that God Himself, after He has recreated us, made us His own, and is actually making our bodies His home.
No longer does He dwell in an earth-made holy of holies. Our bodies have become His temples.
Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20 ASV)
That didn’t seem possible to me. What a vision I caught of what we are in Christ!
When one becomes God-inside minded, when he takes for granted that “greater is He that is in him than he that is in the world” (see 1 John 4:4), he goes out and faces life’s problems with the sense of a conqueror.
This is almost an unknown practice in the church for men and women to say in every crisis of their life, “I am a conqueror; I am more than a victor because the Creator dwells in me. He can put me over. He can make me a success. I can’t fail.”
What effect will this knowledge, put into practice daily, have upon the prayer life?
Romans 8:26, then, can be a reality: “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
Really, that will solve the prayer problem.
If the Holy Spirit is voicing the desires of the Father through your lips, those desires will be met and granted.
Sixth, it is necessary for us to know the reality of our fellowship with the Father.
This is the very heart reason for redemption.
God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:9)
Fellowship means sharing, equally bearing the burden, sharing in the victories; and He has called us to share with His Son.
John tells us, “Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3) and “We have fellowship one with another” (verse 7). We have the joy of walking in the light as He is in the light.
The highest honor the Father has ever conferred upon us is to fellowship with Himself, with His Son, and with the Holy Spirit in carrying out His dream for redemption of the human race.
Relationship without fellowship is an insipid, tasteless thing.
It is like marriage without love.
Fellowship is the very mother of faith, the parent of joy, and the source of victory; He has called us individually into fellowship with His Son.
If you have fellowship with Him and if you are walking in the light, as He is in the light, prayer becomes one of the sweetest privileges, one of the greatest assets that we have fallen heir to in Christ.
Again, it is necessary for us to know the authority of the name of Jesus, not as a part of a creed or a doctrine, but to know it as an actual reality, just as though some wealthy man should give to you a limitless power of attorney to use his name.
What would it mean to you? And what effect would it have if he said to you in that legal document, “Supply every one of your needs and act as though this fortune were your own?”
The Father has given to us the power of attorney to use the name of Jesus, and that name has all authority in heaven and on earth.
That makes us absolute masters of satanic forces.
Jesus said, “In my name shall they cast out demons…They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16:17–18 ASV).
He said, “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you” (John 16:23).
That is limitless.
It is the limitlessness of the prayer life, and it belongs to every child of God.
It is not a problem of faith, but a problem of knowing your legal rights in Christ, and then taking your place as a son and daughter and actually playing the game with Him.
LAST WORDS
You have read the book. Your honest heart has been deeply affected. You have discovered treasures that you never knew existed. You have found your rights and privileges in a prayer life.
Now what are you going to do with this knowledge?
You remember that knowledge brings responsibility; and if we do not assume the responsibility, it brings judgment. You know too much now not to act upon this knowledge. Begin a prayer life of your own; then bring together little groups and teach them this prayer life. You can do it.
You see, prayer is a most vital and necessary thing to know about as a believer. Pray while the glow is upon you.