Today we need to be blended together by much and thorough prayer. In our prayer we should not merely exercise our spirit but also release our spirit. Praying is the unique way for us to exercise our spirit and even the more to release our spirit. When our spirit is released, we can be blended together in this released spirit. Actually, when our spirit is released, there is no need to talk about blending. The released spirits are a kind of blending.
When we come together to pray, we need to release our spirit by praying short prayers. Our prayers are too long. The long prayer is a prayer of composition. It is not prayer out of a burden. The real burdened prayer would not be a long composed prayer. At one time in the 1960s when we were in Los Angeles in Elden Hall, our prayers were very short. Sometimes we had over two hundred in our prayer meeting. Each saint would pray one sentence, and we were like one person praying together. We coordinated together in our prayer, and there were no long prayers. In one recent meeting, I pointed out to some of the co-workers that their prayers were too long.
Soon after I was saved, I met with the Brethren. We always had a long prayer meeting with long prayers. In that long meeting, there were only four or five who prayed. Four or five occupied the entire time, and the composition of their prayers was mostly the same. Furthermore, among these four or five who prayed, we usually knew in what order they would pray. When the prayer came to the last one, everyone knew that after his prayer, we would soon be dismissed. Our church prayer meeting has reached this kind of situation with long prayers. Long prayers kill, but short prayers stir us up. Short prayers fan our spirit into flame.
It is very difficult for the brothers and sisters who are used to praying long prayers to have a change to pray in a short way. Those who pray long prayers always lay a foundation of much explanation in their prayer. They explain to the Lord why they need to pray, or they give the Lord directions about how to answer their prayer. They may say, “Lord, You are so good. We are not praying for ourselves. We are not on this earth. Lord, we are today in the heavens. Even we are at Your throne....” We need to drop this way of explaining in our prayer to the Lord. In order to blend ourselves together in the vital groups, we must drop the old way of praying long prayers. We should pray short prayers, simply telling the Lord what we want Him to do for us (cf. Mark 10:51).
Acts 2:42 shows us the importance of such prayer. The three thousand who entered into the church life all continued in four things: the teaching of the apostles, the fellowship of the apostles, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. Prayer was one of the four critical items in which they continued. Today I would say that we have the first three items. We remain in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, and we have the breaking of bread, the remembrance of the Lord at His table, every Lord’s Day. Today our best meeting is the Lord’s table meeting, but our prayer is inferior. Even our attendance in the prayer meeting was very low at one time, and the persons who prayed mostly were dead and dying. They prayed in a dead and dying way. Thus, many of the saints lost the appetite to come to the prayer meeting.
The prayers in the prayer meeting have been long prayers, full of explaining to the Lord and of giving the Lord descriptions and instructions. Very few would ask the Lord directly what they wanted Him to do. There was also very little commanding in our prayers. It was rare to hear anyone pray, “Lord, we give You the word. We give You the command. You have to come in to do it.” This kind of commanding prayer is needed (Isa. 45:11). We need to learn to pray in a proper way in the prayer meetings. We should pray slowly, pray emphatically, and pray spiritually. We should practice this kind of prayer in all of the vital groups.
The three thousand who were gained on the day of Pentecost continued steadfastly in the prayers of the Spirit with a real burden. First, the one hundred twenty continued steadfastly in prayer for ten days. Then the three thousand continued steadfastly in prayer. Acts 6:4 also tells us that the apostles made the decision to continue steadfastly in prayer and the ministry of the word.
In Ephesians 6:18 Paul said that we need to pray at every time in spirit and watch unto this in all perseverance. We need to be watchful, on the alert, for the maintaining of our prayer life. Praying must be followed by watching. We have to add watching to our praying. After we make the decision to pray, many things will rise up to keep us away from praying. This is why we have to watch unto our prayer in all perseverance. To watch means that we are on the battlefield. The battle is raging, and there are enemies around us.
If we want to continue steadfastly in prayer, we need to schedule and even to budget our time in the way that we would budget our money. If we do not budget our money, we will spend it without any control. Since we budget our money, we should also budget our time. In the budget of our time, we should set up at least two or three times for prayer. In the morning, we could pray for at least fifteen minutes. Then according to our schedule, we could budget another time for prayer in the mid-morning, noon, or afternoon. Then we can budget another time in the evening before going to bed. We should budget these three times for prayer.
If you make a decision beginning from tomorrow to pray at certain times, be prepared for things in the environment rising up to frustrate you. As you begin to pray, someone may knock on the door. Throughout the days of the year, no one knocked on your door at this time except after you made the decision to use this time to pray. When you go to the door to see who it is, you may find out that the person knocked on the wrong door. That may cause you to be angry and lose your heart to pray. Thus, the fifteen minutes which you set aside for prayer will be annulled. If you decide to pray at 10 A.M., three friends may come to visit you at that time to spend an hour with you. We have to realize that such things are the attack of the enemy against our prayer.
It is best not to answer the door or the telephone during our prayer time. Actually, we are too busy to go to the door or answer the phone during our time of prayer. We are busy in contacting our Lord, our King. Since we are with our King, how can we go away from Him to attend to other things? We should not allow anything to interrupt our prayer time, our time with our King. In one sense, we should consider that we are away from home during our prayer time. We are away from home taking care of our King. The Lord could say to us, “You are here occupied by Me. How could you leave Me here, go to answer the door, and be occupied by your friends for one hour?” Surely this is not right. We need to pray at every time in spirit and watch unto this prayer in all perseverance. Perseverance means to be very strong in our insistence. Our attitude in our prayer should be that we are now with our King and that we would not be interrupted from having this time with Him.
We have to watch. The enemy will always do things to annul our prayer time. If this were not the case, the apostle would not have charged us to watch unto prayer in all perseverance. We should not allow our prayer to be spoiled, captured, or annulled. We need to watch and be on the alert to maintain our prayer time. We should always keep our prayer time. During this time we should consider that we are away from home because we are busy with our King, with our Lord.