Please note: For the most part, today's post is not a prayer, but my hope and prayer is that God would use these words to spur you on in the work of prayer for revival in the Church. I thank God for those of you whom He raised up and given a desire to pray for revival and I am particularly thankful for those of you He has used in many ways to encourage and sustain me.
If you wish to discuss what I've written here, please send me a message and/or visit my other sites (naphtali_deer or deerlife). As I've said in my first post here, I want the comments here to be devoted to prayer and not discussion. Thank you for respecting that.
Yours in Christ, seeking His face for revival in my soul and in the Church at large,
Karen
Yesterday on my other site I wrote of our ongoing need to pray for the Holy Spirit. (If you've not done so, I would encourage you to go and read that post based on Ezekiel 37:11-14.)
We must continue to take the position King Jehoshaphat did after he'd heard the Ammonites and Moabites and other nations were coming to battle against Israel:
II Chronicles 20:1 After this the Moabites and Ammonites, and with them some of the Meunites, came against Jehoshaphat for battle. 2 Some men came and told Jehoshaphat, “A great multitude is coming against you from Edom, from beyond the sea; and, behold, they are in Hazazon-tamar” (that is, Engedi). 3 Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the LORD, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. 4 And Judah assembled to seek help from the LORD; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the LORD.
5 And Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the LORD, before the new court, 6 and said, “O LORD, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you. 7 Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend? 8 And they have lived in it and have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name, saying, 9 ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you—for your name is in this house—and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save.’ 10 And now behold, the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy— 11 behold, they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession, which you have given us to inherit. 12 O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
In much the same way, if we are Christ's, we are going to be opposed on every side. May we never minimize or forget that. Jehoshaphat and Israel were facing a physical battle, but there was also a spiritual battle going on, and all of that is a picture the spiritual battle in which we are engaged. We are living in a realm of unseen powers and principalities. The devil is Christ's adversary and therefore he is also the adversary of all who are Christ's. The devil and his angels are on a relentless pursuit to tear down the work of Jesus Christ. Let us never forget that we are Christ's workmanship and the Church is His new creation, so we are targets of the evil one. The devil is the prowling, roaring lion who is looking to devour. He and his angels are working to do all they can to wreak havoc in the lives of the people of God. Of course, with that, we know that they are still under the sovereign hand of God, which limits their activities.
From a human perspective, did it really make much sense for Jehoshaphat to take that time to fast and pray (or later in the chapter we read how the nation of Israel spent time worshiping the Lord before and during the battle)? Consider that there were not a few, not even a multitude, but a great multitude of armies coming to battle!
Well, no, this doesn't make sense ... not if we look at it through human, secular eyes, that is. Sometimes many of us think prayer is only for the little things, but when it comes to those great multitudes, well, we really need to help out God a bit (or more than a bit!). How pathetic we are! Would that our longsuffering God might grant us patience to trust Him and wait upon Him, rather than resorting to our own schemes and relying on our pitiful resources. God's ways and God's thoughts are higher than ours. Whenever the children of God humble themselves and seek God's face in prayer and fasting for His heavenly wisdom and when we give Him the due reverence He deserves and demands, no matter how foolish and weak that may seem in the eyes of men, we can trust that our God will never fail to bless us and strengthen us and equip us with all we need for doing His will.
We see how Jehoshaphat confidently approached the throne of grace in Israel's time of need. We see how he continued to look to God's character – His sovereignty power and might – as well as God's past provision and His continuing covenant promises to His people. Because Jehoshaphat set these truths about the Lord before Him, he was able to set the Lord before him and was unmoved in this time when many might panic and react out of the flesh. Jehoshaphat knew he could trust God to hear and save Israel for the sake of His Name and boldly asked Him to do so. Of course, we can do the same for Jesus' sake. Yet, how seldom do we avail ourselves of the privilege of prayer and resort to acting before praying (if we pray at all)? Or how often do we go to prayer lacking boldness and confidence that our God is for us all because we do not immerse ourselves in the truths about God we find in Scripture, and then continue to find witness of throughout Church history and our own lives. How often do we panic and seek out human means of help all because we do forget His benefits and remember that He is the God who does wonders.
We also see that Jehoshaphat wasn't merely saying to God, "Bless us," or "Bless our plans," as if going to prayer would work like some kind of lucky charm or talisman, as a sort of add on. Jehoshaphat had no other plan but to go directly to the Lord in fasting and prayer. Jehoshaphat knew Israel had no other power or recourse but to turn to the Lord. Right there we have the king of Israel publicly admitting in the midst of the congregation in the house of the Lord: "We are powerless...We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you."
O, that the Lord would send us more ministers who will stand up in their congregations and confess their weakness and lack of wisdom, their inability to do anything apart from Him! What blessed humility it takes for any of us to admit our total insufficiency and our total reliance on the Lord. Is not that what our Lord Jesus did? Was He not wholly dependent on His Father?
John 5:19 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise...30 “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.
(Lord God, be gracious to us, come and fill Your ministers with Your Spirit, the Spirit of Your Son, so they might wholly rely on You and Your power and strength and not on themselves or the wisdom and strength of other men or of the world. Come and fill us likewise. Continue to impress on each of one of us that without You we can do nothing. We confess we too easily begin to trust in ourselves and our own resources and in the world's ways rather than trusting in You. You are the Vine, we are the branches. Help us to continue to abide in You so we might bear much fruit, fruit that will last, fruit to Your glory.)
Whenever we hear of trouble in the Church...
do we set our faces to seek our LORD?
do we proclaim fasts?
do we assemble to seek help from the LORD?
do we profess our inability and impotence and seek the LORD?
To whom shall we go when the Church is threatened from inside and out?
Who has the Words of Life?
Who is the Bread of Life?
Who is the Living Water?
Whose Spirit blew so we might be born again?
The Lord Jesus Christ!
Whenever we hear of trouble in the Church...
do we set our faces to seek our LORD?
do we proclaim fasts?
do we assemble to seek help from the LORD?
do we profess our inability and impotence and seek the LORD?
Do we not do these things because we think we don't need His help?
Do we not do these things because we see ourselves as sufficient?
Do we not do these things because we do not trust His might and power?
Do we not do these things because we do not remember (or even know) His might and power?
Do we not do these things because we do not trust His promises?
Do we not do these things because we do not remember (or even know) His promises?
Do we not do these things because we do not fear?
In verse 3 we see how Jehoshaphat feared. Do we ever fear? Do we tremble? Do we ever see that our own earthly and fleshly supplies are pitifully insufficient and inadequate to fight the spiritual battle? Do we see that we can do nothing apart from the power of God at work on our behalf? How often do we become puffed up with pride, only to find ourselves pitifully defeated and upended? May we take heed, lest we fall. How pathetic we are that we so quickly forget the riches of Christ which await us at the throne of grace and glory!
O, that our Lord would look upon us with pity as we labor in vain and work from the flesh. But by His grace, we would certainly continue to build in our own efforts, to continue to toil in rowing and faint, to continue to labor in vain. May God be gracious to us and send His Spirit once more to work to soften our hearts so we might receive with humble gladness the lesson the apostle Paul had learned, the lesson of our blessed insufficiency and His total sufficiency!
II Corinthians 3:4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
My primary aim in writing today is to remind you (and myself) that as much as it makes little sense to us to continue to bow our knees and prostrate ourselves with the enemy approaching (and even as the enemy has come into the midst of many of our congregations and denominations like savage wolves in sheep's clothing), we must continue to go into the presence of the Lord in prayer, for along with the ministry of the Word, prayer is one of God's primary ordained means of reviving His Church.
As we pray for days or weeks or months on end, or even years, we may become discouraged for we may not see "results," but we must continue in faith and continue in prayer and seek His face. Prayer must always be our first course of action, never a mere afterthought, an add-on, a Plan B or a last ditch effort. Yes, I do know there are times we all must get up off our knees and act as the Lord directs us (well, yes, still praying without ceasing, bathing all we do in prayer and continuing to rely on His Holy Spirit), but may we never minimize, neglect or downgrade the vital necessity of entering into our closet and continuing in prayer for ourselves and one another, for our congregations and their leadership and the Church as a whole.
May our Lord guard us so we never skip ahead to action without first seeking Him in fervent prayer. Might it help us (me) to consider prayer as planting seeds? We read in Psalm 126 that as we sow faithfully in tears, we will surely reap a harvest in joy. Our labor in the Lord is never in vain, and that includes our labor in prayer, when we are praying according to Christ's will. We will reap in due season if we do not faint!
Almighty God, You know our spirits are willing but our flesh is weak. By Your Holy Spirit, strengthen us with Your power and might, so we might pray without ceasing alongside You, eternal Intercessor, Great High Priest.
Habakkuk 3:2 O LORD, I have heard the report of you,
and your work, O LORD, do I fear.
In the midst of the years revive it;
in the midst of the years make it known;
in wrath remember mercy.
Psalms 85:6: Will you not revive us again,
that your people may rejoice in you?
Please add your PRAYERS as His Spirit leads you.
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