Connecting to the Victory of God by PrayerMy aim and my prayer through this message is that this year you might feel yourself captured by a cause and a vision a thousand times greater than your life. I pray that you will feel yourself to be part of the coming victory of God. I know that many of you feel: Look, pastor John, you don’t know what I am dealing with. I just want to survive another day. I just want to keep my marriage together and raise a couple decent kids, and keep my nose clean. Believe me, I’m not opposed to that. My aim is not to burden you. My aim is for you to feel the liberating, energizing power of seeing your all-consuming problems in connection to God’s global victory. God cares about your marriage, your kids, your singleness, your health. But these only have their greatest meaning in relation to the victory of God. I promise you it is not oppressive to see the littleness of your life in connection to the largeness of God’s victory. Every just war that has ever been fought for a great ideal has given meaning to the loneliness, and the amputations, and the widowed moms.The connection that I want you to see today between your life and the victory of God is the connection of prayer. Your prayers are God’s way of accomplishing the victory of Jesus Christ over this world. I know that for many of you this is way beyond what you usually pray about. I think God wants to change that. I hope that praying for the victory of God in this world will become part of your life. Don’t object by saying, “I’m too small. I’m unsophisticated. I’m not educated. I’m just an ordinary, simple person.” God chose a simple, peasant virgin to bear his Son. And he chooses simple people of faith to bring his victory by prayer. O don’t rule yourself out of this great calling.Let me show you what I mean by the connection between prayer and the victory of God with some biblical texts and then close with a shocking illustration from Isaiah 37.I’m going to quote nine texts. Don’t try to look them up. Instead listen carefully and try to fix the connection in your mind between prayer and the victory of God. Ask God to speak to you and seal this truth to your heart and waken a new passion in you to participate in the coming of God’s victory.In Matthew 6:9-10 Jesus taught us to pray like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The coming of God’s kingdom and the doing of his will on earth the way the angels do it in heaven is the victory of God. This is the consummation of the ages. This is what everything is moving toward. And Jesus says, Pray for it. Pray for it! Ask God to hallow his name. Ask him to bring in his kingdom. Ask him to make his will be done. Therefore prayer is God’s way of winning his victory through you.In Matthew 24:14 Jesus said, “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” In other words the good news of King Jesus and his salvation will spread to all the nations. That is God’s invincible purpose and prelude to final victory. But that happens through witnesses and missionaries and evangelists. So what does Jesus do? He says in Matthew 9:37 “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” There is no doubt that this divine purpose to reach the nations will come to pass. But it will come to pass by means of prayer. Therefore prayer is God’s way of winning his victory through you.Jesus told a parable once about an unrighteous judge. The point of the parable was that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). A widow kept coming to the judge and saying, “Give me justice against my adversary.” Finally he does it because of her persistence. Jesus makes this point: “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily” (Luke 18:6-8). God’s sure purpose is to give justice to his elect. And his decision is to do it through their crying to him for vindication day and night. This is prayer for the victory of God. Therefore prayer is God’s way of winning his victory through you.The battles to be fought on the way to the final victory – the battles that prepare the world for Christ’s coming – move forward by prayer. In Acts 4:31 Luke tells us of a gathering of early Christians: “And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” When they had prayed they spoke with boldness. That is how the kingdom advances: Prayer which brings down bold, Spirit-filled witness to Christ. Therefore prayer is God’s way of winning his victory.The apostle Paul was probably the greatest missionary witness to the victory of God that ever lived. God used him for tremendous breakthroughs for the spread of the gospel. Listen to his repeated plea for prayer as a means to his gospel-spreading ministry: 2 Thessalonians 3:1, “Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you.” The word runs and triumphs by means of prayer. Ephesians 6:19, “[Pray] for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel.” Paul’s boldness in the gospel came from God by the prayers of simple Christian believers. Romans 15:30, “I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf.” The wrestling of Paul to be faithful in all his sufferings was sustained by a wrestling in prayer by the brothers in Rome. Colossians 4:3, “Pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison.” Open doors for the spread of the gospel come in answer to prayer. Therefore, in the life of Paul it is plain that prayer is God’s way of gospel victory.Finally, there is a picture in Revelation 8:4-5 about how the end-time victory of God is finally executed in the world. Here’s the picture: “Another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. 5 Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar [where the prayers were burning before God!] and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.” The altar was burning with millions and millions of prayers: “Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!”—mounting up over the centuries! And the angel filled the censer with the flame of those burning prayers and threw it on the earth and the final victory of God came. The prayers of the ages bring the victory of God. Not one single cry for the coming of Christ and the victory of God is ever wasted.
