Prayer Summary for Thursday, April 06, 2017

Jerre led worship…

Pastor Lynne has asked that we daily pray for America and the President. So we’re going to do that now.

Group prayed for America…

Erika shared…

I feel strongly led to do a quick review of something I touched on, on Monday. We talked about a larger Christian life. We’re talking about increase in the body of Christ. The Church must increase in order to do her job. I took it from A.B. Simpson’s book, “A Larger Christian Life.” I’m using his material because his articulation expands your thinking to such a degree that you maybe haven’t for a while thought about things in that light. We covered five areas about what it means to be enlarged.

The first thing we saw is that we need a larger vision. The first step in our advance must be a new conception of the truth as it is in Jesus and a larger view of His Word and will for us. A new conception of the truth as it is in Jesus.

Number two, we need a larger faith. If all things are possible to him that believes, we ought to have all things in His will for every moment of life’s needs.

We need a larger love. We need love that will meet God’s claim of perfect love. As He has said, thou shalt love the Lord thy God will all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. We need a love that will love one another even as He has loved us. That means loving the body of Christ. That means loving the unlovable. That means going. If He says go to the gutters of the world. A larger love that looks on our brothers and sisters who maybe aren’t like us, who maybe don’t think exactly the way we think, who maybe live on the other side of the earth and they worship Him differently than us.

We need a larger joy, a joy that will not only rejoice in the gifts of God but will rejoice in God Himself and find Him our portion and our boundless and everlasting delight. That means at all times. That means when things are awesome, and that means when they’re not so awesome. Joy unspeakable and full of glory. Think of Jesus for the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross.

We need a larger experience. We don’t mean by this a mere state of emotional feeling. But a larger range of Christian living. A bringing of Christ into everything. An experience that will prove Him in all situations. Amid secular business, exasperating circumstances, baffling perplexities, extreme visitudes and going all around the circle of human life.

[begin excerpt]

We need a larger work. We do not mean by this that we need a larger sphere. That may not be. That certainly is not the case if we are not filling our present; but we need a better quality of work. We need to finish our unfinished work. We need to do the things that we have thought of doing, intended to do, talked about doing, and are abundantly able to do. We need to do the work that can be done in the intervals and interstices of life, the work that can be done on the way and on the wing, between times as well as in times of special service and appointment; the word that can be spoken as we casually meet people; the work that can be done by the wayside and on the crossroads of life, where souls meet that never meet again. Sometimes the ministry that can be performed at such a moment becomes the pivot for hundreds of souls and eternal ages to turn upon. We need a work that is larger in its upward direction, more wholly for God, more singly devoted to His glory, and more satisfied with His approval whether men are pleased or not. And we need a larger conception and realization of the work that He expects of us in the special line in which He has been developing our Christian life. Most of those who read these lines or hear these words have been called to know Christ in a measure unknown to the great mass of the people of God, and we have not yet realized what God expects of us in spreading these special truths and extending this blessed movement, of which Christ is the center and substance, over all the land and over all the world. God is calling us at this time to a larger faith for this special work—the testimony of Jesus in all His fullness to all the world.

We need a larger hope. We need to realize more vividly, more personally, more definitely, what the coming of the Lord means, and means to us, until the future shall become alive with the actual expectation and ever immanent prospect of His Kingdom and His reward. Oh how little this great hope has been to the hearts and lives of most of us until within a few years. How utterly blind the majority of Christians are to it as an actual experience. How much inspiration is it fitted to lend to the heart that truly realizes it. May the Lord enlarge our hopes and intensify them until this becomes, next to the love of Jesus, the most inspiring, stimulating, quickening motive of our Christian life and work.

We need a larger baptism of the Holy Spirit, for this is the true summing up of all we have said. It is one thing, not many things, that we need; and, filled with the Spirit in still larger measure, the fruit of the Spirit shall expand and increase in proportion. We need more room for His indwelling, more scope for His expanding, more channels for His outflow. We are not straitened in Him, we are straitened in ourselves. “He giveth not the Spirit by measure,” but we receive Him in very confined and small capacities. He wants more room; He wants our entire being, and He wants so to fill it that we shall be expanded into larger possibilities for His in working and His out flowing.

Beloved, “be ye enlarged.” And not only in all these senses and directions, which, no doubt, have searched us and made us realize the limitations of our present lives, but we want to be enlarged in the quality of our life; we want not only more breadth and length, but we want depth and height, a more spiritual, a more mellow, a more mature fruition, and a more established, settled and immovable standing in and for Him.

II. CONSIDERATIONS AND DIRECTIONS WITH A VIEW TO OUR ENLARGEMENT

In order to our being enlarged, we must be delivered from and lifted above our old conceptions, ideas and experiences. In a word, we must be delivered from our past. Old things must pass away before all things can be made new. We must die to our religious self as well as to our sinful self. It was when he was far on in the spiritual life that Paul uttered the sublime aspiration, “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” In the strata of our globe, we find traces of the wreck of former conditions of organic life. There was a creation and then there was a disintegration, and on its ruins a new and higher development. So in the spiritual world, we come to the place where we are conscious that the old experience fails to satisfy. The old “rephidims” are dry and we must open some new rock of Horeb and receive supplies from a higher source than before. When you find your old nest ceasing to rest you, be willing to leave it, and like the eaglets, be hurled into space, that you may be taught to fly. Let the old things pass away. They are but the basis of something better. Let the old turn-pike be broken up. The King’s Highway is to be built above it, and God’s great elevated railway carry us where formerly we trod with weary feet.

There is nothing that keeps us from advancement more than ruts and drifts, wheel tracks into which our chariots roll and then move on in the narrow line with unchanging monotony, currents in life’s stream on which we are borne in the old direction until the law of habit almost makes advance impossible. The true remedy for all this is to commence each day anew and to commence at nothing; taking Christ afresh to be the Alpha and Omega for a deeper, higher, diviner experience, waiting even for His conception of thought, desire, prayer, and afraid lest our highest thought should be below His great plan of wisdom and love.

Are there not some of us, beloved, who have been trying a good while to get back an old experience? If we succeeded we should only be where we were, and if we are only going to get where we were, we have abandoned the law of progress and begun the downward retrogression. God has Himself withered by His own consuming breath the flower and fragrance of your former joys, that He may lead you into something better. Let your old experience go, and take the living, everlasting Christ instead. Be willing to be enlarged according to His thought, and exceeding abundantly above all that you have yet been able to ask or think.

If we would be enlarged according to the thought of God, we must be delivered from all human standards, opinions, and patterns, and accept nothing less than God’s own divine ideal. Multitudes are kept from spiritual progress by cast iron systems of doctrine which have settled forever the fact that holiness is impossible in the settled forever the fact that holiness is impossible in the present life, and that “no mere man, since the fall, is able to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break them in word, thought, and deed.” And then a row of human characters is set before us to prove the impossibility of sanctification, and to show the satisfying and humbling influence of human imperfection. Multitudes have made up their minds in advance that they never can have the fullness of Jesus beyond certain narrow limits, and, of course, they cannot advance beyond their standards. Now we quite agree with the statement that no mere man can be holy or blameless, but the Lord Jesus is no mere man, and when He owns and keeps the heart it is a divine holiness and a divine keeping; and we do assert that what no mere man can do, the living Christ can do and does do for those who abide in Him. Let us take the divine measure, whatever man may think or say.

Many also are ever looking to some human example, and, “measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.” Either we shall find ourselves as good as somebody else and be content, or we shall be satisfied to be as some human ideal, and so shall stop short of the only perfect pattern. We shall never grow up to the measure of the Lord until we take the Lord’s own word and character as our standard and ideal; until we take our stand upon the sure and immutable ground that He who commands holiness expects us to be holy, and that He who promises His own grace and all sufficiency to enable us to meet His demands, will not excuse us if we fail. He has offered us Himself as the life and power of our obedience and holiness, and nothing less than His own perfect example should ever satisfy our holy ambition. Looking unto Him and pressing ever closer to His side and footprints, we shall be transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, and shall thus go from strength to strength. [end excerpt]

Prayed…

Thank You, Father, that we can join with You in the great work of prayer
That we can come boldly to Your throne of grace
Father, we need You more today and we did yesterday
Enlarge us, Father, in every way
We’re asking that You would enlarge us individually so we can be your hands and feet
We’re looking for a great expansion and increase in the body of Christ
That we would throw off the chains and limitations
Supernatural aid and assistance, O God
Aid to have a larger faith and larger joy, larger work, larger hope
We forget those things that are behind and press on toward the new
Greater hope in the coming of the Lord
That we would stand in the face of every situation
We look for greater love in the body of Christ
Love is doing what we believe
Love as You love, Father
Touch our eyes in a new way, that we would see in a new way
We’re hungry, Father… we are thirsty for You

My Father, do Your work in me… Do Your work in us, Father… Make us to know not in our heads but in our hearts cause us to know who You are in us… Cause us to know that we know that we know… the power resident within and the power that You provide, Father… that resurrection power… cause us to see it and ourselves walk in it… that the lightnings of God would burn, Father, for all men… that our eyes would be like Yours, O God… burning with the fire that no one can quench… for only You… deeper, deeper than deeper… Sons of God… we are the sons of God… nothing is impossible… we shake off the old… shake it off!… shake off everything… every defeat… for this is a new day, says the Lord… My Spirit is being poured out upon all flesh… those who receive it, the new day… we receive it, Father… we will be among those that receive it… walking in a new way… walking in a new authority… walking in a new power… above, above, above… the body is above and not beneath… not beneath anymore but above… seated, the seated place… seated place with You, Lord, in the heavenlies… believing… it’s a new day… and the sons and daughters of God are arising… we’re arising, Lord, we’re arising to it… do whatever you want to do… if you want to knock us off our donkey, Lord… if you want the noon day sun to shine brighter than ever, that we would be blinded by it, Father… whatever You want to do, O God, whatever you want to do, do it in us… that Your kingdom would be exalted, Your name would be glorified… We let go, Father, of ourselves… and let You rule and reign… Jesus… for the strength and the power come from You, Father… You make us new… You make us new upon our beds… in the night visions… throughout every day and every moment of every day… Lord, we open our ears to You… reign in us… You are our authority, Father… and You are beautiful, Father… for every situation… Let Your love in us be greater, compelling us into the highways and the byways… truly living as You lived… truly touching as You touched… that we would be possessed with You…

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