The Spiritual Man-Watchman Nee Page 271-272- Permission To Share Info
All Prayer Ought To Be Spiritual. Unspiritual prayers are not genuine and can produce no positive result. What abundant spiritual success there would be were every prayer offered by believers on earth in fact spiritual! But sad to say, fleshly prayers are far too numerous.
Self-will found therein deprives them of spiritual fruitfulness. Nowadays Christians appear to treat prayer as a means to accomplish their aims and ideas. If they possessed just a little deeper understanding, they would recognize that prayer is but man uttering to God what is God s will. The flesh, no matter where displayed, must be crucified; it is not permitted even in prayer. No mixing of man's will in God s work is possible, for He rejects the best of human intentions and man s most profitable prospects. God does not will He should follow what man has initiated. Other than following God s direction, we have no right to direct Him. We have no ability to offer save to obey God s guidance. God will do no work which originates with man, no matter how much man may pray. He condemns such praying as fleshly.
As believers enter the true realm of the spirit, immediately they shall see how empty they themselves are, for absolutely nothing in them can impart life to others or work havoc upon the enemy. Instinctively they will, therefore, reckon on God. Prayer then becomes imperative. True prayer uncovers the emptiness in the petitioner but the fullness in the Petitioned. Unless the flesh has been reduced to a vacuum by the cross, what use is prayer and what can it possibly signify?
Spiritual prayer does not proceed from the flesh nor the thought, desire, or decision of the believer; rather does it follow purely from that which is offered according to the will of God. It is prayed in the spirit, that is to say, spiritual prayer is made after one has discerned the will of God in his intuition. The command insisted upon in the Bible is to pray at all times in the spirit (Eph. 6.18). If that is not the way we are praying we must be praying in the flesh. We should not open our mouths too hastily upon approaching God. On the contrary, we first must ask God to show us what and how to pray before we make our request known to Him. Have we not consumed a great deal of time in the past asking for what we wanted? Why not now ask for what God wants? Not what we want but what He wants. If such be the case, then the flesh is provided no footing here. It takes a spiritual man to offer true prayer.
