Although God has a will, He doesn’t act independently; rather, when man echoes God’s will back to Him in prayer, He can do anything, and when God’s people agree with God’s will, He will carry out what He wants.
This week in our morning revival we come to the topic of, Praying for God’s Will to be Done on Earth.
When we speak of prayer we use it in the highest and most noble sense; it is not the common prayer, but the prayer that offers God the cooperation He needs for His will to be carried out on the earth.
We want to see the highest kind of prayer, the prayer that releases God’s will on earth.
When God speaks to us, we need to not only say Amen to His word and exercise our spirit and mind to understand it and receive it, but we also need to pray the truth into our lives and pray it out.
We should pray over all the truths that we have heard and spoken, so that these truths would not remain merely in our mind or in our notebooks but are manifested in our lives.
We need many definite and thorough prayers for God to do in us what He wants to do.
We may hear that God has an eternal will to head up all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10); we need to pray this will back to God, offering Him the cooperation that He needs through our prayer.
We can participate in God’s will by remaining under the divine dispensing so that the will of God may be carried out in us and in the church.
The will of God is unto an economy, unto a dispensing; we need to keep ourselves under the divine dispensing, and if we do that, we will grow in life, we will function out from Christ the Head, and we will participate in the will of God.
God has a will related to every matter, both big and small; however, He also has a will in the most significant sense, and we can participate in the will of God to head up all things in Christ by our prayer, by aligning our will with His will, so that His will may be done on earth as it is in the heavens.
We need to not only understand and agree with God’s will; we need to pray over everything we hear, read, and understand of the will of God, so that we pray them into us and the Lord would carry them out in us.
Especially in the limitation we’re in right now, the quarantine and the lockdown in many of the countries around the world, we need to give ourselves to prayer.
May we take the opportunity to pray over the word of God, use our time for prayer and the ministry of the word, and especially pray over the ministry of the word.
Prayer doesn’t change what God has ordained; rather, prayer accomplishes what God has already ordained!
The lack of prayer, however, changes things; the absence of prayer delays the carrying out of God’s will, for when God’s people don’t work together with God, he will allow many of the things ordained by Him to be delayed and no be fulfilled.
We cannot change God’s mind through our prayer; rather, real prayer is aligning our will with God’s will and being one with God to release His will on the earth – such a prayer is answered by the Lord.
God wants Man’s Will to be one with Him so that Man Echoes God’s will back to Him in prayer
Although God has a will for everything, He has set forth a principle: in what regards man and the things on earth, He does not act independently; rather, He wants the human will on earth to echo His will before He does anything (Matt. 6:10; 1 John 5:14-15).
This is a great principle in God’s economy.
We may wonder why would God – if He wants to do something – be limited by man’s cooperation? God is already omnipotent and He already knows what He wants to do, so why doesn’t He just do it?
This is a question we need to ask God.
However, based on God’s word, God operates according to some principles that He Himself established, and one of these is that in time, God would not act independently but rather waits for man’s will to be one with Him so that man echoes God’s will back to Him in prayer for Him to carry out His will.
God created the universe independently of man, but ever since the creation of man, He would not act independently of man.
He has limited Himself to man’s cooperation, and He Himself is bound by this great principle.
God wants a human will that is in harmony with the divine will to match it so that man echoes God’s will back to Him in prayer.
God doesn’t want man’s initiation – He simply unveils His will to man and wants man to echo the desire that is already there in His will.
In this universe there are three wills: the divine will, the satanic will, and the human will.
God wants that man’s will would be joined to Him and be one with Him so that man would express and echo His will back to Him in prayer for the good pleasure of His will (Eph. 1:5, 11; Isa. 14:12-15; Matt. 6:10; 7:21; 26:39; Phil. 2:13).
In the beginning there was only the divine will, and after the creation of man there was the human will; before the creation of man, another will came into being – the satanic will.
The angels created by God also have a free will – every creature created by God has a free will.
Originally, the angelic will was one with the divine will, but the archangel Lucifer put in charge by God of the old universe rebelled against God, being proud.
In Isa. 14:12-15 we see how Lucifer said four times, I will!
Before this, there was only one will, but when he said these things, now a second will came in to challenge and oppose the divine will.
Lucifer said, I will ascend to heaven…I will exalt my throne…I will sit upon the mount of assembly in the uttermost parts of the north…I will ascend above the heights of the clouds…I will make myself like the Most High.
Now there are two wills that oppose each other – God’s divine will and the satanic will; the divine will is carried out without opposition in the heavens, but the divine will is greatly opposed on earth, where the satanic will is prevailing today.
Today on earth there’s a satanic cosmos, the corrupted earth; here Satan usurps God’s place – he’s not the rightful user of the earth, but he usurps the earth.
The human will today therefore is pivotal: it stands between the divine will and the satanic will.
If the human will is aligned with the divine will and opposed to the satanic will, when man echoes God’s will back to Him in prayer, then God’s will is done on earth as in the heaven.
But when the human will is not aligned with the divine will, it is automatically one with the satanic will.
We can’t be neutral; we can’t stand here with our own free will not being either for the divine will or the satanic will.
If we are not perfectly aligned with the divine will, we are absolutely aligned with the satanic will. What a great responsibility we have today as the church!
Lord Jesus, thank You for showing us the divine will, the great will of God to head up all things in Christ through the church. We agree with Your will: we align our will with Your will, and we echo in prayer Your will back to You for the good pleasure of Your will. Amen, Lord, we do not agree with Satan’s usurping the earth and corrupting man; we desire that Your kingdom come on earth and Your will be done on earth as in the heaven! Gain our will, Lord, and gain our prayers that echo God’s will back to You in prayer for Your will to be done on earth!
When Man’s Will Cooperates with God, Everything related to God’s Move and Work on Earth can be Accomplished
God created us with a free will; He didn’t make us like robots to listen to Him automatically and do whatever He wants us to do, but He gave us a free will.
Similarly, God created the angels with a free will, and they can choose God or they can choose to follow God’s enemy.
Man was not created like a piece of wood or a stone, which can be put here and there without any will of their own. Man has a will to choose to obey God’s word, and man can disobey the word of God.
We are not obligated by default to obey God or carry out His will; we have a free will, and when man’s will cooperates with God, God can carry out His will on earth.
God has an eternal will and He wants to carry it out, but He is willing to be limited in time because He wants to gain a harmonious will that is one with Him!
This is a glory to God and a shame to the enemy.
Satan doesn’t respect man’s will; he tricks man, deceives man, and injects himself into man to corrupt man and destroy man.
Satan doesn’t have a purpose that he presents to man and then man agrees with him; rather, Satan deceives man, lies to man, ensnares man, and usurps man.
Without us knowing this, our will is by default aligned with Satan’s will, and he lies to us, he deceives us, and he usurps us.
But our great God gives us a free will; He presents His purpose to us, He shows us His love and His will, and He wants to gain our will to cooperate with His will, so that man echoes God’s will in prayer to God for the carrying out of His will.
Everything related to God’s move and work on earth can be accomplished only when there’s a will on earth that cooperates with Him (John 7:17).
For example, look at the Welsh revival, in the early 1900’s; Evan Roberts was a coal miner used by the Lord very much, and his distinct characteristic was not his eloquent speaking but his prayer – he was a man of prayer.
Jessie Penn-Lewis, a contemporary of Evan Roberts, wrote an account of the Welsh revival, and she said that each of the 70.000 or so people that were saved during that short period of time was prayed for by name.
This was done in small groups, in prayer circles (or vital groups as we call them today) – they were prayed for by name, each one of them!
God wants to save man, but He waits for man’s willing cooperation with Him; when man echoes God’s will back to Him in prayer, He can save, He can move, and He can do what He wants to do.
In the Welsh revival, if there had not been that prayer, there had not been a Welsh revival – it could not have happened.
No doubt it was in God’s heart to do it, but He had to find someone who would cooperate with Him.
Today God is looking for some to cooperate with Him on earth by echoing God’s will in prayer back to Him for Him to do what He wants to do on the earth. May we be such ones today!
Thank You Lord for creating us with a free will to choose You or to reject You. Thank You for revealing Your will, Your heart of love, and Your economy to us. We align our will with Your will, and we want that our will would be harmonious with Your will today. Amen, Lord, we reject Satan’s usurpation, his tactics and his tricks; we reject to be aligned with his will and we choose Your will! We want to cooperate with You in prayer so that You may have a human will on earth that releases Your will to be done on earth as it is in the heavens!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Mark Raabe for this week, and portions from, CWWN, vol. 22, “The Prayer Ministry of the Church,” pp. 140-141, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Will of God (2020 spring ITERO), week 3, Praying for God’s Will to Be Done on Earth.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Lord, we meet to seek Thy face / And in one accord to pray; / We a holy priesthood are, / Waiting on Thee here today. / Here together we would pray, / Touch the highest and the best, / Till our spirits mingled are / And Thy Church is built and blest. (Hymns #772)
– Praying to express the Lord, / We must utter His intent, / Quieting our human thoughts / That with His our mind be blent. / Praying to express the Lord, / Ever looking unto Him / As a mirror to reflect / All His glory from within. (Hymns #785)
– Daniel had companions, and they ate God’s Word, / From the world, they stood apart; / Through a praying spirit were aligned with God, / For His people, God’s own heart. (Song on, Choose to Be an Overcomer)
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