The life that we need is also the resurrection life, which is the pneumatic Christ in resurrection (John 11:25a) with the resurrection power (Phil. 3:10a). When we live on the cross, being conformed to the death of the cross, the resurrection life rises up from within us. The human life is crossed out, and the divine life rises up to live. Every time we go out to visit people with the gospel, we must go with our natural life on the cross and under the death of the cross so that the resurrection life of God can have a chance to rise up within us to talk to people. Then when we talk to people, it is God in His resurrection who talks through us. We all have to practice this, and we have to make such a practice our habit. Whenever we go out to knock on doors for the preaching of the gospel, we need to go on the cross in the mold of Christ’s death. This gives the very God who is within us as the resurrection life the way to rise up to do His work. On the one hand, this is the crucified life, but on the other hand, this is the resurrection life. This resurrection life is the pneumatic Christ. Christ is the pneuma, the breath, the air, the Spirit. Such a Christ has the resurrection power.
The divine life of Christ, the crucified life, the resurrection life, is the life which we live (Gal. 2:20b; John 14:19b). This is the life in which we walk, work, and have our being. This is the life in which and with which we carry out the work of the New Testament ministry.
For the organic building up of the Body of Christ, we need the divine life, and we also need prayer. We realize that we need another life, that we have been made by God as vessels as the means through which God can work. Still we need prayer. To pray means that we realize that by ourselves, with ourselves, and in ourselves, we are nothing. Therefore, we do not want to do anything by ourselves. Instead, we want to do everything in God, with God, and through God. There are two significances of prayer. First, when we pray, we pray ourselves into God. Second, when we pray, we pray God into us. We are not that much in God nor is God that much in us. Because we are distracted, we get outside of God. If we are going to do God’s work, we need to get into God. Furthermore, God is not that much in us. Therefore, we need to pray God into us. Then we can do the work in a way in which we are mingled with God. In other words, we are in God, and God is in us. We can arrive at this situation and condition by prayer. When we pray, we do not need to pray too much for affairs or for the work. We need to pray ourselves into God, and we need to pray God into us. This is the principle of prayer.
When we want to preach the gospel, we have to stop a while to pray. To pray means to stop ourselves from doing anything. If we can do something on our own, we do not need to stop and pray. We can just go ahead and do it ourselves. Many times we carry out the service in this way. We do it by ourselves. This is wrong. We have to stop ourselves. If we look into the New Testament, we can see that the Lord Jesus always prayed first. His prayer was to stop Himself from doing anything apart from the Father. His prayer afforded Him the opportunity to be fully one with the Father. Then the work done by God the Father was through Jesus, the Man. It was the same with the early apostles. The book of Acts shows us that whenever there was some activity, the apostles firstly prayed. They never initiated work without prayer. Whenever they wanted to do something, they stopped themselves by their prayer. Their prayer gave God a way to come into them, to fill them up, and to saturate their very being. Then the apostles began to work. That work was not something done by the apostles independent from God. Instead, the work done by the apostles was only done in full dependence on God.
In the book of Acts, we can see the prayer of the early saints for the organic building up of the Body of Christ. The prayer that we need is the prayer that brought in the outpouring of the Spirit (Acts 1:14; 2:1-4, 16-17a). One hundred twenty saints praying with one accord for ten days brought in the outpouring of the Spirit. The outpouring of the Spirit is the outpouring of God Himself. God poured out His entire being, the Spirit, upon the disciples. Immediately, the disciples became one with God. Here is the principle of praying ourselves into God and of praying God into us. Their prayer brought God from the heavens to the earth and upon themselves. Prayer is like our breathing. When we breathe, the air gets into us, and we get into the air. The result is that air is poured upon us. When we experience the outpoured Spirit through our prayer, we are refreshed to the uttermost.