Prayer and Gospel

The gospel preaching of the church and the prayer ministry of the church go hand in hand. As the church, we have been practising and enjoying both. Every Saturday, we have both gospel and prayer meeting together, to enable the saints to participate in both, as most of the saints are working saints. The day being a holiday, we make use of the day for this two important ministry of the church. 

Two weeks ago, as we were praying, the Spirit led us to pray and pray, as burden after burden was released. All the saints enjoyed the flow of the Spirit to the extent that time was not a concern anymore. We followed the Spirit's anointing and amened the burdens released by different saints. Finally, after we all released the burden the Lord imparted to us, we have had prayed for three hours and ten minutes. Though the schedule of the duration for prayer is just an hour, we tripled the allotted time. By the way, we were supposed to go out after prayer for the gospel preaching, we ended up praying the whole time. Coincidentally, it was also raining the whole time. We just reckoned it was the Lord's sovereignty that He wanted us to pray.

This is also very much in line with the burden of the Lord's speaking these days: God's central work is to work Himself into us to make us one with Him. Though we have to carry out the gospel work, the work of the Lord must never be work oriented but Christ centred. The gospel preaching or any other spiritual activities must be the result of the overflow of the divine life within us. Lest we also end up like the church in Ephesus who left the first love the Lord Jesus and substituted with the works of the Lord Jesus. The Lord led us especially to pray more before we would go out to preach the gospel. After the prayer, all the saints were so released and so joyful. 

These days the Lord's perfecting work has deepened to touch our inward being and our coordination in and as the church. More prayer in the spirit, more prayer individually, and more pray as the church are needed for the Lord's move in and through us. Blessed are we who can learn this lesson now, more blessed shall we be when we pray and preach the gospel, and much more blessed shall we be when the Lord pours out His blessing in the way of gaining many new believers into the church life for His testimony!