After we pray for the burden, we must immediately pray for guidance. This means that we should pray that the Lord will give us some definite persons, such as our classmates, roommates, neighbors, relatives, and friends. We should not pray for too many. Rather, we should pray to seek the Lord’s guidance and that He would give us two or three persons to care for at the present time.
After we receive the guidance, we should pray for these persons. This is the principle of the New Testament. A person can never be saved without someone praying for him or her. If we trace the record of the New Testament, the history of the church, and the stories of many saints, we will find this principle. We must realize that we were saved because someone prayed for us. I know who prayed for me to be saved; I am very clear about this.
We must take this burden. Because this is the New Testament time, God will never do anything directly by Himself, although He is able to. He does everything related to gospel preaching through us by our cooperation. God could send an angel to prepare Cornelius, but He would not send an angel to preach the gospel to him and his family (Acts 10:1-7). The angel came to Cornelius, but he did not preach the gospel because that was not within his limit; it was not his obligation. This obligation belongs to saved humans. Therefore, the angel told Cornelius that he had to send for Peter, who would have the word of salvation. God could send the angel to tell people how to find an evangelist, but He would not send the angel to preach to them.
The two books written by Luke—his Gospel and the Acts—are books of the preaching of the gospel. However, these two books give us many illustrations of prayer. Of the four Gospels, Luke gives the most illustrations of how the Lord Himself always prayed. Acts also is a book of prayer. Before the first preaching by the church on the day of Pentecost, the disciples prayed for ten days (1:14). Everything that happened after that related to preaching also needed to be started by prayer. The work of going out from Antioch was started by prayer (Acts 13:2). In Acts 10, the call to preach came to Peter while he was praying (vv. 9-17). Ananias, the small disciple who was sent to confirm Saul of Tarsus, received the vision of the Lord’s sending in prayer (9:10-11). If we read the book of Acts, we can see that this book of preaching is a book of praying.
We all must pray definitely by name for the persons for whom the Lord burdens us. Learn to do this. When Brother Watchman Nee was a young man studying in the first two years of college, he would fast during the whole day of Saturday for his preaching the next day. Within those one or two years, close to two hundred students were brought to the Lord, almost entirely through him. This was a small college of no more than three hundred highly qualified students. After those years, almost the entire college was stirred up. If someone went to the campus and the halls, he would see the students doing almost nothing but reading the Bible and kneeling to pray. This was a real revival, which was due more than ninety-five percent to the young Brother Nee. Every week he purposely gave up breakfast, lunch, and dinner to shut himself in his room to pray and read, and on the next day, he would carry out the preaching of the gospel. All those who were brought to the Lord were truly converted and changed in life. In 1922 these persons had gospel preaching campaigns. It was not in a so-called church building but on the street or in the court of a home. They had no seats; they would tell people that whoever came to listen to the gospel had to bring their own seat. This revival was due to the prayer of Brother Nee.
Try to have this kind of prayer. I have the full assurance that the easiest prayer for the Lord to answer is the prayer for sinners. I will not give any regulations, but I would suggest that we as Christians, especially the young brothers, should have one or two days a week separated for the purpose of being with the Lord to pray for sinners and for the gospel. On those days we should keep all our prayers on this one matter, to pray definitely for the gospel preaching and for the certain persons for whom the Lord has burdened us. Without this, our outreach will not be prevailing. We have to touch the throne. Do not think that gospel preaching is an easy matter. It is a real battle. The Lord Jesus told us clearly that we have to bind the strong man, who is the enemy Satan, in order to release the wealth usurped by his hand (Matt. 12:29). To release the precious souls from the usurping hand of Satan, we need to pray and touch the throne. To save a person from hell and the fallen situation is not a small thing. Therefore, we must pray.