by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net
Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace
An
all-time Christian Classic on prayer which is a foundational study on
prayer that anyone interested in Prayer should read. So, I decided to
summarize it chapter by chapter. With Christ in the School of Prayer is a
classroom on the Power of Prayer in your Life.
With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray,
Chapter 15, the Power of United Prayer:
“The
meaning of prayer is personal individual contact with God. It also of
public united prayer. And He gives us a very special promise for the
united prayer of two or three who agree in what they ask. So prayer
needs the public fellowship with those who find in the name of Jesus
their common meeting-place.
The bond that unites a man to his fellow-men is no less real and close than that which unites him to God: He is one with them.
Christians
cannot reach the full blessing God is ready to bestow through His
Spirit, but only as they seek and receive it in fellowship with each
other.
It is in the union and fellowship of believers that the Spirit
can manifest His full power.
It was to the hundred and twenty
continuing
in one place together,
and praying with one accord,
that the Spirit came from the throne of the glorified Lord.
The marks of true united prayer is agreement
as to the thing asked. There must not only be generally the consent to
agree with anything another may ask: there must be some special thing,
matter of distinct united desire; the agreement must be, as all prayer,
in spirit and in truth.
The
second mark is the gathering in, or into, the Name of Jesus. The Name
must be the centre of union to which believers gather, the bond of union
that makes them one ... ‘The Name of the Lord is a strong tower; the
righteous runs into it and escape.’ That Name is to meet within it
is to have Himself present. ‘Where two or three are gathered in my
Name, there am I in the midst of them.’ It is the living presence of Jesus, in the fellowship of His loving praying disciples, that gives united prayer its power.
The third mark is, the sure answer: ‘It shall be done for them of my Father.’ He meant it as a means of securing special answer to prayer. A prayer meeting without recognized answer to prayer ought to be an anomaly. The mark of true united
prayer is the fruit, the answer, the receiving of the thing we have
asked: ‘I say unto you, It shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.’
What an unspeakable privilege of united prayer :
--if
the believing husband and wife knew that they were joined together in
the Name of Jesus to experience His presence and power in united prayer
(1 Peter);
--if
friends believed what mighty help two or three praying in concert could
give each other; --if in every prayer meeting the coming together in
the Name, the faith in the Presence,
--
if in every Church united effectual prayer were regarded as one of the
chief purposes for which they are banded together, the highest exercise
of their power as a Church;
--if
in the Church universal the coming of the kingdom, the coming of the
King Himself, first in the mighty outpouring of His Holy Spirit, then in
His own glorious person, were really matter of unceasing united crying
to God.
Who can say what
power a Church could develop and exercise, if it gave itself to the
work of prayer day and night for the coming of the kingdom, for God’s
power on His servants and His word, for the glorifying of God in the
salvation of souls? God rules the world by the prayers of His saints;
that prayer is the power by which Satan is conquered; that by prayer the
Church on earth has disposal of the powers of the heavenly world.
Union in prayer in the smaller circles, its blessing has been great.
And it will become even greater, as God’s people recognize what it is,
all to meet as one in the Name of Jesus
to have His presence in the midst of a body all united in the Holy Spirit,
and boldly to claim the promise that it shall be done of the Father what they agree to ask.”
More on the Power of United Prayer
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.XV.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.
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