Prayer is the Secret to Accomplishing God’s Work, so we must Persevere in Prayer!

The book of Acts shows us that our working together with God to build up the church is a spiritual warfare and that prayer is the secret to accomplishing God’s work; we must pray prayers that stand and resist against the enemy’s attacks, and in one accord, we persevere in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving. Amen!

This week we have been enjoying the matters of maintaining the one accord by the three substances of power in the Lord’s recovery – prayer, the Spirit, and the Word.

How can we maintain the one accord? It is only by means of prayer, the Spirit, and the Word that we can maintain the one accord.

This means that, just as the early disciples did, we need to be those who are toiling in the Word of God, labouring in prayer, and being diligent in dealing with the Holy Spirit. We take no other way today except prayer, the Spirit, and the Word.

We come to the Lord and ask Him to bring our entire being into the light so that we may be dealt with by Him and we may become persons of power, those full of the Spirit within and without to speak the word with boldness.

If we take any other way besides prayer, the Spirit, and the Word, dissension will come in; however, if we pray in one accord, are filled with the Spirit, and speak only the Word of God, the Lord has a prevailing way to propagate Himself.

There are some factors of division in our being, but by our coming to the Lord in His word and being in the sanctifying truth, all these factors are dealt with and overcome.

When we come to the Lord’s sanctifying word, we will be saturated and permeated with Him as the reality, and any factor of division is removed.

The result will be that we have the genuine oneness, which is the issue of sanctification. May we contact the Lord every morning, touch the living word, and have the divine reality infused into our being.

And may we let the Lord shine on the factors of division, purge them from our being, and keep us in one accord.

Day by day we need to move out of ourselves and into the Triune God so that we may be one and be perfected into one to be in one accord.

How do we move out of ourselves and into the Triune God? It is by means of the sanctifying word of God. We need to touch the Lord in His word and let the Spirit touch us.

As we allow His word to speak to us and the Spirit to touch us, we are rescued from ambition, worldliness, self-exaltation, and opinions and concepts.

The result is that we are one – He is in us, we are in Him, and there’s a genuine oneness among us. Amen!

The most practical way for us to carry out God’s economy and cooperate with the Lord for His move on earth is prayer; we need to learn from the early disciples to pray to offer God the cooperation He needs to move in an unhindered way!

Prayer is the Secret to Accomplishing God’s Work: we must Persevere in Prayer!

From the beginning to the end of the book of Acts we see that our working together with God to build up the church is a spiritual warfare, and prayer is the secret to accomplishing God’s work (Acts 4:24-31; Psa. 2:1-2; Eph. 6:10-20).

We are in a spiritual warfare today. The Old Testament shows us that the centre of everything was the temple and the city of God.

Also, the Old Testament shows us that, at every stage and in every age, the enemy wants to damage the building and destroy the city with the temple of God.

Especially as we cooperate with the Lord to build up the church today, the enemy all the more comes in to attempt to destroy the building and discourage us from building the church.

The Lord Jesus unveiled the church in Matthew 16:18, and He said that He will build His church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

As soon as we give ourselves to the Lord for His building work, the gates of Hades are present, attacking us.

On the one hand, we need to be warned that, whenever we join ourselves to the Lord for His building, there will always be attacks. However, on the other hand, we need to not be disheartened or discouraged, for the secret is prayer: we can fight the spiritual warfare in prayer.

When the enemy attacks us, we realise we’re on the right track; we are touching the nerve of the enemy. So we need to pray, and we need to pray prevailing prayers.

There’s a great shortage of prayer today. We do so much, we are drawn to so much work for the Lord and in the church life, but we pray so little.

We may have meetings to coordinate and fellowship about the things we need to care for, but even in these meetings, we pray so little; so many times, we “get down to business” and have a very short time of prayer.

May the Lord cause us to rise up today and stand in prayer with Him. May we see that prayer is the secret to accomplishing God’s work, and may we persevere in prayer!

The prayers that we utter before the Lord must stand and resist any “counter-prayers” that are particularly directed against the church and the work that we are carrying out to build up the church (John 17:15; Matt. 6:13; cf. Psa. 31:20).

We may think that our spiritual warfare is only against Satan, and it is true; however, there are some who call themselves Christians who also fight against the building work of God, being influenced by Satan.

In the Lord’s time, it was the religionists of those days – the Jewish leaders with their priests who had the Bible in their hands – who persecuted and put the Lord to death.

Today, it is religion and Christianity that rise up to persecute, slander, and attack the genuine believers in Christ who give themselves to building up the church as the Body of Christ. Oh Lord!

As we stand with the Lord for His interests, some attack us and persecute us, even revile us. May we not be disheartened, but rather, persevere in prayer.

Though the enemy sets up conspiracies against us and attacks us, we pray one with the Lord for Christ to be propagated and spread.

The enemy also attacks by injecting lethargy into us, and we do not feel the need to fight the spiritual warfare by prayer. Oh Lord!

May we be those who see the enemy’s strategy and realise that prayer is the secret to carrying out God’s work. May we be those who persevere in prayer today!

Lord Jesus, we love You and we love the church! We give ourselves to You for Your building. We want to be one with You for building up the church as the Body of Christ. Amen, Lord, may we be those who work together with God to build up the church today. May we realise that prayer is the secret to accomplishing God’s work, and may we persevere in prayer! Amen, Lord, we believe that You are building the church, and we stand on Your word that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against the builded church! We simply exercise our spirit and utter the prayers You need to defeat the enemy and for the church to be built up! Save us from being disheartened when we see the enemy’s attacks. Save us from losing heart when we see persecution and attack even from our fellow believers. Oh Lord, we stand with You in prayer. Hide us in Your presence from the conspiracies of me. Lay us away secretly in the shelter apart from the contention of tongues. May Your church be built up so that You may gain a corporate expression on the earth today!

We need to Pray Without ceasing in order to Maintain the One Accord and Practice the Oneness

The secret to accomplishing God’s work is prayer. We need to persevere in prayer (Col. 4:2), even pray without ceasing.

Prayer involves a battle, a fight. In this universe there’s a continual battle going on between God and Satan. These two parties are hostile to each other.

The meaning of the name Satan is “adversary.” As soon as God wants to do something, Satan is there, being the adversary to oppose God.

He tries to defeat God from outside as God’s enemy, and he’s also the adversary within God’s realm, seeking to cause damage (John 1:6-12; Rev. 12:10).

We human beings are in the middle; we need to take sides, either with Satan or with God. God’s chosen and redeemed people are the ones who will actually decide the outcome of the battle.

If we today take sides with Satan by not praying, God will lose ground, even though He’s almighty. Wow, we can delay God or cause His kingdom to suffer loss if we take sides with His enemy! God needs us, in a real sense.

Yes, He is almighty, and He will eventually defeat Satan, but in this age He needs us.

We need to pray without ceasing in order to maintain the one accord and practice the oneness. By prayer, we stand with God and His interests on the earth today.

How can we fight on God’s side? How do we take God’s side in the spiritual warfare today? It is by prayer. We need to persevere in prayer.

The whole world is away from God; when we pray, we go against the current, the trend, in this fallen universe. We can all testify from our experience that, when we set a time to pray, everything in the world rises up against it.

When our time with the Lord comes, when it’s time for us to pray, the phone rings, someone knocks at the door, or we receive a notification.

May we realise that we’re engaged in spiritual warfare, and we need to be watchful and on the alert in order to know what the enemy is doing and what he intends to do.

In the Lord’s work and in the church life, there’s no such thing as sheer luck, nor is there such a thing as gaining without effort.

We must pray without ceasing, even persevere in prayer, in order for us to maintain the one accord and practice the oneness.

Satan is the evil one; he has wiles and tactics, temptations and corruptions, and his one goal is to fight against God’s building in order to frustrate it, withstand it, damage it, and destroy it.

In the book of Acts, we see so many cases in which the enemy used the priests, the Romans, and all kinds of things in the environment, including the storms on the sea, to hinder the Lord from doing what He wants to do in and through the disciples.

Yet the disciples prayed; they just prayed and remained one spirit with the Lord.

In every step we take to build up the church, there’s a battle. The whole world is against us, against our prayer. Our mobile phone, for example, is so useful in so many ways; however, when it comes to our time with the Lord, it can be a great hindrance.

Our phone, our computer, our tablets, and the accessibility of things, including social media, all things are anti-prayer.

We need to be careful how we handle and manage our prayer time so that it may not be eaten away.

Today, people persevere in many things, such as spreading their opinions and beliefs; the husband and wife may also persevere in exchanging words, for they think they are right.

But who perseveres in prayer? Who doesn’t give up on prayer but takes the word of God by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints (Eph. 6:16-17)?

May we be such ones today. May we pray without ceasing, keeping ourselves intimately connected to the Lord (1 Thes. 5:17; Matt. 26:41; Col. 2:1).

May we realise that prayerlessness is a sin; may we be saved from the sin of prayerlessness and rather be prayerful and stand in prayer one with the Lord.

We truly need to pray in one accord, standing one with the Lord and one with the saints against the enemy’s attacks and tactics, even praying to advance God’s kingdom.

There’s a great need for us today to engage ourselves in spiritual warfare for the building up of God’s kingdom through prayer.

For us to have a proper church life in the Lord’s recovery today, we need to have a prayer life. As 1 Timothy 2:1 says, we need to first of all pray. Our church life is proper when we pray, for prayerlessness is a sin.

Lord Jesus, we want to be those who persevere in prayer today. We want to maintain the one accord by persevering in prayer, watching unto this with thanksgiving. Oh Lord, save us from the sin of prayerlessness. We stand against prayerlessness and we stand one with You in prayer. We stand on Your side, Lord, and we want Your kingdom to come and Your will to be done! Amen, Lord, may we be those who pray without ceasing, keeping ourselves intimately connected to the Lord. Oh Lord Jesus, we want to persevere in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving. We come to You in Your word by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit! Oh Lord, may we watch unto prayer in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints! May we first of all pray! Make us praying ones. May the church be a praying church. We bring Your word back to You and say Amen, do it in us, Lord!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1986, vol. 2, “Crucial Words of Leading in the Lord’s Recovery, Book 1: The Vision and Definite Steps for the Practice of the New Way,” chs. 13-14, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, One Accord and Crucial Aspects of the Book of Acts (2025 April ITERO), week 3, Maintaining the One Accord by the Three Substances of the Power in the Lord’s Recovery – Prayer, the Spirit, and the Word – day 6.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Pray with one accord in spirit, / By the cross deny the soul; / All desires and all intentions / Let the Spirit now control. / Pray with one accord in spirit, / Pray as in the heavenlies; / All the earthly interests treading, / Fight the principalities. (Hymns #779 stanzas 2-3)
  – Pray to fellowship with Jesus, / Fully opened from within, / With thy face unveiled, beholding, / Single, pure, and genuine. / Pray to fellowship with Jesus, / Seeking Him in confidence; / Learn to touch Him as the Spirit, / Looking up in reverence. (Hymns #784 stanzas 2-3)
  – Praying always in the spirit, / In the holiest place divine; / It is only in the spirit / God and we in oneness twine. / Praying always in the spirit, / ’Tis the only way of prayer; / All the fulness of the Godhead / By this secret we may share. (Hymns #780 stanzas 5-6)