140 days until the Lilburn, GA, USA Revival Conference
It is this union of the teaching of the word and Spirit that many do not understand, so there is a twofold difficulty in knowing what God's will may be. Some seek the will of God in an inner feeling or conviction and would have the Spirit lead them without the word. Others seek it in the word, without the living leading of the Holy Spirit. The two must be united. Only in the word, only in the Spirit, but in these most surely, can we know the will of God and learn to pray according to it. In the heart, the word and Spirit must meet. It is only by indwelling that we can experience their teaching. The word must dwell, must abide in us. Heart and life must day by day be under its influence. Not from without but from within comes the quickening of the word by the Spirit.
It is only he who yields himself entirely in his whole life to the supremacy of the word and the will of God who can expect in special cases to discern what that word and will permit him boldly to ask. And even as with the word, just so with the Spirit. If I would have the leading of the Spirit in prayer to assure me what God's will is, my whole life must be yielded to that leading; only so can mind and heart become spiritual and capable of knowing God's holy will. It is he who, through word and Spirit, lives in the will of God by doing it who will know to pray according to that will in the confidence that He hears us.
Would that Christians might see what incalculable harm they do themselves by the thought that because possibly their prayer is not according to God's will, they must be content without an answer. God's word tells us that the great reason of unanswered prayer is that we do not pray aright. "Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss." In not granting an answer, the Father tells us that there is something wrong in our praying. He wants to teach us to find it out and confess it, and so to educate us to true believing and prevailing prayer. He can only attain His object when He brings us to see that the reason for the withholding of the answer is our aim and our faith, or our life not being what it should be. But this purpose of God is frustrated as long as we are content to say that it is perhaps because my prayer is not according to His will that He does not hear me. -Andrew Murray
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