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For Those Seeking The Truth
& Dynamic Living Christ is Victor |
May/June 2009
Volume 22, Number 3
“The
Undercurrent of Prayer”
“Watch ye therefore, and pray
always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come
to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” (Luke 21:36)
Jesus warns His disciples to take heed lest their hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and in the cares of this life. Even when we are serving God, organizational responsibilities can take our prayer time and we lose the edge of our spiritual life. Setting time apart to search ourselves before God is called watching. We must wait till the voice of God reaches us to reveal to us our spiritual condition. It would be a great pity if that watchfulness is cut off from us. We must have seasons of prayer to search ourselves and dig into ourselves, lest the love of the world and the cares of this world blind us and make us sin against God. When our eyes are blinded, presumption comes into us. When we are getting strong in the Lord there comes into us a certain amount of confidence and presumption. When we receive many answers to prayer we become presumptuous. If we are humble, God will rebuke us and bring us to the right path. People may not find fault with us because we have established a good name. But we must examine ourselves in the Light of the word of God.
God wants to
make you a very sensitive and a very powerful instrument. God wants to make you
sensitive in your thoughts so that you might be perfect. A sensitive instrument
must be carefully handled and kept carefully in a safe place. God knows how to
prepare you, but Satan tries to prevent it. Very often wrong friends and going
to wrong places makes you dull spiritually. God wants to make your mind very
keen and your heart abound with His thoughts. Your prayer may take the same
time but you would have uttered all your heart. The reason is that the Word of
God is deepening you. Then the Word of God will reach you in prayer and you
will be equal to it. When God asked Abraham for his son, he was equal to it.
God did not ask him for his son, when he was in
Take time to cleanse your heart of all dross. There will come a time when you will be praying all the time. It will be spontaneous. You will love to read the Word of God more and more. It will be honey in your mouth. You will understand it more and more. The undercurrent of prayer will be there all the time. You will be praying while working and walking and talking. It was so with Jesus. While he was walking He was praying. A woman touched him while He was walking. She was healed immediately. He was so sensitive and immediately he knew it.
Watch and pray always. Great will be the peace of such men. If you do not watch and pray you will be going down and down. Finally a strange spirit takes hold of you and you think it is the spirit of God. It was so with Saul; only a Samuel could discern it. We should be very careful, each one watching, each one helping the other.
Presumption is a terrible thing. We must keep ourselves humble and acknowledge that we do not know anything. In all our ways we should acknowledge Him. This is not easy. We should not be wise in our own eyes. As you become richer and richer in your spiritual life, you will become a greater and greater blessing to others.
When we deviate
from God’s will presumptuously, we will sin more and more. We will become
proud. But if you are praying always, you will begin to pray the mind of
Christ. Even in your dreams, you will draw nigh unto God. You will enjoy great
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Now people are continuing in ungodliness
because there is no one to demonstrate this kind of life. But when you begin to
build the
-N. Daniel
“Reality Check”
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” Psalm 14:1
“George Mueller’s Five Conditions for Prayer”
God has given George Mueller in these latter days as a proof to His Church how literally and wonderfully He still always hears prayer. It is not only that He gave him in his lifetime over a million pounds sterling to support his orphanages, but Mr. Mueller also stated that he believed that the Lord had given him more than thirty thousand souls in answer to prayer. And that not only from among the orphans, but also many others for whom he (in some cases for fifty years) had prayed faithfully every day, in the firm faith that they would be saved. When be was asked on what ground he so firmly believed this, his answer was: There are five conditions which I always endeavor to fulfill, in observing which I have the assurance of answer to my prayer:
1. I have not the least doubt because I am assured that it is the Lord’s will to save them, for He willeth that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (I Timothy 2: 4); and we have the assurance ‘that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us’ (I John 5:14).
2. I have never pleaded for their salvation in my own name, but in the blessed name of my precious Lord Jesus, and on His merits alone (John 1: 14).
3. I always firmly believed in the willingness of God to hear my prayers (Mark 11:24).
4. I am not conscious of having yielded to any sin, for ‘if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me’ when I call (Psalm 66:18).
5. I have persevered in believing prayer for more than fifty-two years for some, and shall continue till the answer comes: Shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him?’ (Luke 18:7).
Take these thoughts into your hearts and practice prayer according to these rules. Let prayer be not only the utterance of your desires, but a fellowship with God, till we know by faith that our prayer is heard. The way George Mueller walked is the new and living way to the throne of grace, which is open for us all.
“The Consecrated Cobbler”
William Carey was a cobbler. He was always proud of it. Outside his little shop there was a sign board: “Second Hand Shoes Bought and Sold—William Carey”.
They called his shop “Mr. Carey’s College.” He had a map of the world on the wall, and he studied about the world, talked about the world and prayed about the world, and his friends thought he was crazy.
Then he became a teacher and then a village preacher, and was paid a salary of $80 a year for doing the work of both teacher and preacher. One day when the Baptist ministers of the district were in conference, he preached to them from the text Isaiah 54:2,3 and he had two great thoughts in his sermon:
First: Expect great things from God.
Second: Attempt great things for God.
Then and there the Baptist Missionary Society was formed and Carey became the first missionary of that society.
Old Andrew
Fuller said: “There is a gold mine in
This is how
William Carey the cobbler became the first and the greatest of missionaries to
Years passed by and once again Andrew Fuller was preaching before the Missionary Society what Carey’s sermon had created, and they were all rejoicing in the good news from India and the triumph of the Gospel there under the “Consecrated Cobbler”. Not only was Mr. Carey a missionary but his two sons, Felix and William, were also Christian workers in the mission.
One of the
ministers had been telling about these two sons, and then he said. “But
there is the third who gives him pain; he is not yet turned to the Lord.”
With tears flowing down his face the minister who had spoken, said,
“Brethren, let us send up a united fervent prayer to God in solemn
silence for the conversion of Jabez Carey.” Jabez is such an odd name but that was the name of the
wayward son who gave his father pain in the far-off mission home in
The next letter that came from the mission field told the story of the change that had come over Jabez. His father told when it happened, and they knew it was the very day, the very hour, when they had all been in prayer for him. Immediately Jabez Carey decided that he too must be a missionary and one day Dr. Carey and his two missionary sons, Felix and William, laid their hands on the head of Jabez and in prayer ordained him to the Gospel ministry.
What a happy family they were!
No wonder Dr. Carey wrote to his friends: “Oh, praise the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together. To me the Lord has been very gracious. I trust all my children love the Lord; and three out of four are actually engaged in the important work of preaching the Gospel, two of them in new countries.”
“Moving Men through God!”
When Hudson
Taylor, as a young man, had given himself over unreservedly to the Lord, there
came to him a strong conviction that God would send him to
Hudson Taylor
had a position as a doctor’s dispenser, and asked God to help him not to
ask for his salary, but to leave it to God to move the heart of the doctor to
pay him at the right time. The doctor was a good-hearted man, but very
irregular in payment. This cost
So he learned
the great lesson to move men through God—a thought of deep meaning, which
later on became an unspeakably great blessing to him in his work in
After he had
been for some years in
Read his biography. There will be found in it a treasure of spiritual thought and experience concerning a close walk with God in the inner chamber and in mission work.
-Selected
“Prayer in a Coffee Shop”
Charles Colson, former special assistant to President Richard Nixon, went to prison for his role in the Watergate scandal and was converted to Christ through reading C. S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”.
He wrote of his
conversion in “Born Again”, a book that was launched with a
backbreaking tour that ended up in
“Two cheese omelets, one milk, and one iced tea” said Fred.
After she left, the two men reviewed the next day’s schedule a few minutes, then decided to ask the Lord’s blessings on their anticipated meal. They bowed their heads, and, as blessings go, it was fairly long. When they raised their heads, the waitress was standing nearby, omelets in hand.
“Hey,” she said loudly, “were you guys praying?” Everyone in the small room turned to look at them.
“Yes, we were.” said Colson.
“Hey, that’s neat.” said the waitress. “I’ve never seen anybody do that in here before. Are you preachers?”
They said, “No” but she persisted in asking questions. Then she said, “I’m a Christian. At least I was once.”
“What happened?” the men asked.
“I
accepted Jesus as my Savior at a rally when I was a teenager. Then I went to
live in
“I don’t think you lost it,” Colson said gently. “You just put it aside for a while.”
The waitress seemed thoughtful. “It’s funny, but the moment I saw you guys praying I felt excited all over again.”
They talked to her at some length about returning to the Lord, about the prodigal son, and about the Lord’s love and forgiveness.
Later during their stay at the hotel they saw her again. “Hey, you guys,” she shouted. She told them she had already called a Christian friend and was joining a Bible study the next day. “And I’m going to find a church, too. I’ve come back.”
Colson later wrote. “Until that night, I had felt awkward at times praying over meals in crowded restaurants. Never again.”
This
newsletter is produced six times per year by the Laymen’s Evangelical
Fellowship International. It is printed and distributed in the
This Fellowship is an inter-denominational missionary and
prayer group working for revival in churches and amongst students in several
countries. We invite every layperson to become God’s ally in changing his
or her corner of the world. We train people in evangelistic work and to be
self-supporting missionaries.
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