John 15:7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. 8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear MUCH fruit; so you will be My disciples”
I am a firm believer of being in the Father’s business. This is where I cease to live for myself, meaning having passed from death to life and that’s it. I want to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord by dying daily (crucifying the flesh) and be challenged to do things my flesh does not crave at all but are good for my growth. I die to self so as to be alive in and unto Christ. Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I want to know His will for my life and there are two things that are definitely God’s will for every believer and that is Prayer (intercession) and Evangelism (reaching the lost). Yet these two are the ones easily put aside from my experience.
This is my personal conviction, you cannot grow MUCH in the Lord without Prayers and Evangelism. I believe these two are the wings that stabilizes our Christian walk like a plane that needs two wings to fly and balance. Wings provide a balance and stability. They work together, hand in hand. Prayers shows our total dependency on God, Evangelism is our response to His last command. Prayer is talking to God about men, evangelism is talking to men about God. Prayer changes and conforms us to be Christ like and so is the gospel. If you are praying and not evangelizing, you are a Christian with one wing and so is evangelizing and not praying. One cannot work effectively without the other. I pray that I may evangelize and I evangelize that I may pray. A good analogy to make this point clear, God requires us to push rocks (pray and witness to the unsaved) but He doesn’t expect us to move the rocks (save them). In the process of us being obedient to push the rocks (pray for them and share with them), He steps in to move the rocks (save them) and He gets all the credit (glory). The gospel of Christ is the POWER of God to SALVATION, Romans 1:16. In the Great Commission (as it is frequently labeled; Matthew 28:19), Jesus commanded His disciples to “Go… and make disciples.” The objective was not that they attract their own disciples, but that they win new followers of Jesus. Acts tells the story of how the Spirit-filled apostles obeyed that command. If we were to pray for our Father’s will and if we were to lay our heads on the Father’s breast so to speak, I believe we would feel His heart for the lost according to Matthew 18:14, which says, “Even so it is not the WILL of your Father who is in heaven that ONE of these little ones should PERISH”. We may not be too concerned but He is and the moment we get a glimpse, a taste of what He requires of us, we will make His last call our priority. How can we make a last call our priority unless we have prayed the will of the Father to be our burden and then we put legs to our prayers and respond to the call as God’s answered prayer for us.
John 15:7, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you” this may appear as a blank check but not so, look again at how the verse begins, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you..” the more we abide, the more we learn and experience what the Lord requires of us. It shapes and molds how we pray and what we pray for. All our selfish motives about how we pray for melts before His presence as we become consumed by His desire for His name sake. How will He get more glory if we do not go about His business of sharing with the lost?, The bible continues to say, 8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples”. A disciple is a follower of Christ, and what did Christ do with His disciples? He made them fishers of men. This is the “prime product”, the blessings of other things are the “by products” of being obedient. Read the book of Acts and see how they grew MUCH while doing the Lord’s work, Acts 6:4, “but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” Not that other ministries were less important, these two helped them grow much.
These two things have been instrumental in growing me much in the Lord, they shape every aspect of your walk. To evangelize, you need to dig deep into the word. To understand the word you need to pray; to preach the word, you need the boldness acquired through prayers. While you share, the power to save is in God’s hands driving you again to pray. When you share, you are preaching the gospel to others and to yourself. The gospel never gets old. Do you have your two wings? Ask the Lord to day. Blessings Ev
He Has Magnified His Word 