The Ministry of Prayer

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. MATTHEW 6:10

Nee returned to prayer throughout his ministry, and gathered his teaching on it in several places, notably Let Us Pray and the messages published as The Prayer Ministry of the Church. His treatment is distinctive because of the question he begins with. Most teaching on prayer asks how the believer may get what he needs from God. Nee asked something else: why does God need the believer to pray at all?

God has bound Himself to ask

His answer rests on the doctrine of authority in the earth. God gave dominion over this world to man (Genesis 1:26; Psalm 115:16). Man fell, and that dominion passed in practice to the usurper. In redemption, God works to recover the earth — and He does it, characteristically, not by sovereign fiat alone but through a redeemed humanity that wills what He wills. Hence, Nee argued, God has voluntarily limited Himself. He will do a great many things only when His people ask.

Ye have not, because ye ask not. JAMES 4:2

And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. ISAIAH 59:16

He put it in a figure that has been much repeated: God’s will is like a train, and prayer is the track. The train has all the power; it goes nowhere without the rails. Prayer supplies no power at all — and without it the power does not arrive. This transforms what prayer is for. It is not chiefly a means of obtaining things. It is the agreement of the church with the will of God, by which His will is given a way into the earth.

Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 18:19

Praying the will of God

It follows that the first labour of prayer is not speaking but discovering.

Nee taught believers to seek God’s mind before making requests, and he was unsparing about how much praying is merely the presentation of our own preferences with a religious ending attached. The Lord’s own pattern begins Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done — and only afterwards asks for bread.

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us. 1 JOHN 5:14

This is also, he noted, why the Spirit’s help is indispensable. We do not know what we should pray for, and the Spirit Himself makes intercession within us (Romans 8:26). Real prayer, on this understanding, originates in heaven, is carried by the Spirit into the heart of a believer, is prayed back to God, and is answered. The believer is the channel, not the source.

Authority in prayer

Nee distinguished several kinds of praying, and reserved particular emphasis for the prayer of authority — the prayer which, rather than pleading with God, speaks to the situation on the basis of Christ’s victory. He pointed to the Lord asleep in the boat. The disciples begged Him to save them; He got up and addressed the wind. He pointed to Moses at the Red Sea, told to stop crying out and to lift up his rod. And he pointed to the promise of the keys:

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. MATTHEW 16:19

The church, seated with Christ, has been given the authority to declare on earth what heaven has already determined. But Nee guarded this immediately, and the guard is essential: such prayer is only valid within the will of God, and only from a position of submission. A believer who has not learned obedience has no authority to exercise, and attempting it is presumption.

Persistence, and the discipline of it

Finally, he taught persistence without anxiety. The widow before the unjust judge, the friend at midnight, Elijah sending his servant seven times to look at an empty sky — these are given us not because God is reluctant but because prayer is warfare and warfare takes time.

Pray without ceasing. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:17

And practically, Nee urged the keeping of records — specific requests, dates, answers. Vague praying, he observed, produces vague faith, and a believer who never asks for anything definite will never know whether God has answered.

Praise before the answer

There is one further form of praying which Nee treated as belonging to the highest order, and it is the one most of us reach for last.

And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord, and that should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army, and to say, Praise the Lord; for his mercy endureth for ever. 2 CHRONICLES 20:21

Jehoshaphat’s position was hopeless by any military reckoning, and his own prayer had admitted it — neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee (2 Chronicles 20:12). What he did next was to put the choir in front of the soldiers. The praise went out before the battle, not after the victory. Nee’s point was not that praise is a technique for obtaining results. He was firm about that; the moment praise is offered in order to make something happen it has become a transaction and ceased to be worship. The point is what praise declares. To thank God before the answer arrives is to state, in the most practical way available, that the matter is already settled with Him. He pointed also to a Philippian prison at midnight, where two men with bleeding backs and their feet in the stocks sang hymns loudly enough that the other prisoners listened (Acts 16:25). The earthquake came afterwards. The singing was not caused by the deliverance; it preceded it, and it happened in circumstances that offered no encouragement whatever.

By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. HEBREWS 13:15

The word sacrifice is exact. Praise offered when everything is well costs nothing. Praise offered in the dark costs something, which is precisely what makes it an offering. Nee’s counsel, given to people about to endure a good deal, was to make thanksgiving a discipline rather than a mood: to begin prayer with it, to practise it in trouble specifically, and to refuse to wait for circumstances to justify it.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:18

In every thing, he was careful to note — not for every thing. We are not asked to call evil good. We are asked to find God present in the middle of it, and to say so.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Begin your praying this week by asking what God wants, and spend as long listening as asking. 2. Keep a written list of specific requests with dates. Review it monthly and record the answers. 3. Find one other believer and agree together, in Matthew 18 fashion, on one definite matter. 4. Where you have been begging God to do what He has already accomplished in Christ, change your posture: thank Him, and stand. 5. Examine your prayers for a week. What proportion concerned your comfort, and what proportion concerned His kingdom?

A PRAYER

Father, You have chosen to work through the prayers of Your people, and I have often left the rails unlaid.

Forgive me for prayers that were only my own wishes with Your name attached. Teach me to seek Your mind before I open my mouth.

Holy Spirit, pray in me what I do not know how to pray. Give me the persistence that does not let go, and the submission without which authority is only presumption. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. Amen.