The Principle of the Overcomers and the Principle of Prayer

Week 21 in the Crystallization-Study of Psalms (Message 9 in the 2011 Winter Training given by Ron Kangas) revealed the fact that God desires Zion in Jerusalem – He has chosen Zion as His habitation, His dwelling place, His place of rest. But where are the overcomers today? We are in the church life, where we enjoy the Lord together with the saints, but are we the overcomers who will bring the Lord back? What do we deeply care for, and what really concerns us? Is God’s heart’s desire our heart’s desire?

The principle of the overcomers is that they bear the responsibility that the entire church should have taken up. God has entrusted a responsibility and a mission to the church, but the church as a whole has failed God. The overcomers see God’s need and cooperate with Him to meet His need. They are not super-Christians or special people; rather, they are normal in being willing to carry out this responsibility so that through their victory the Lord would consider that the church has fulfilled its mission!

A particular aspect regarding the overcomers is that they are not focused on their reward – their being is for God’s desire, for God to obtain what He is after. There are the highways to Zion in their heart, and they are very concerned for the building up of the Body of Christ! They daily open their whole being to the Lord to breathe Him in, and they are united, mingled, and even incorporated with the Lord in the obtaining of His heart’s desire. They really desire the building up of the Body, and they want to prepare the bride for Christ’s satisfaction!

Until the Lord gains the building up of the Body of Christ, until He has a good number of vital groups with overcoming ones who live and even are the reality of the Body of Christ, He is not at rest – and neither are we. God can rest only when He obtains what He is after in this age – He desires to have the Body of Christ built up and the bride of Christ prepared. Today we all in the church should not pay most of our attention to the Levitical service, practical service, and the outward things, which are necessary and need to be taken care of. Instead, we need to deeply care and be concerned for the building up of the Body of Christ, for the reality of the Body of Christ to be lived out in the church life.

The best way to cooperate with the Lord in this is by prayer. Prayer is not something that we initiate. Rather, God has a will, desire, and intention, and when we open to Him and spend time with Him, He imparts His heart’s desire into us. As we become vital with the Lord and with one another, we receive the Lord’s desire into us through prayer, and then we pray it back to Him! We pray what is deep in our being – and that prayer is the very expression of the Lord’s desire that was infused into us. In this way God has a way to fulfill His desire by fulfilling our desire, which is actually the expression and prayer back to Him of His desire!

We need this kind of prayer today in the church life. We need to learn to pray back to God His heart’s desire that is being infused into us. He desires to build up the Body, but He waits for us to be open to Him and pray His heart’s desire back to Him! Oh, how much God can do when we just stop, listen to Him, are open to Him, and allow Him to infuse us with His desire and intention! When we do this, something comes out spontaneously from us – a prayer of His will, His desire, His intention. The way to reach Zion, the high peak, is through such prayer. This kind of prayer causes us to enter experientially into all the intrinsic things of God’s economy for the sake of the Body of Christ!