Watchman Nee, born Nee Shu-tsu in China in 1903, became a Christian at age 17 and immediately embarked on a ministry of writing, preaching, teaching, and traveling far and wide to serve the body of Christ.
He was imprisoned for his faith in 1952 during the Communist Revolution and remained incarcerated until his death twenty years later.*
Watchman Nee’s writings are widely esteemed around the world. He reveals deep revelations about faith, suffering, the church, and the pursuit of God’s will. He was and is a unique treasure to the church.
I encountered some of Nee’s writings about prayer in this three-book volume. He reminded me that prayer is the most powerful and necessary work of the believer.
Here are some of the principles Watchman Nee teaches in his book, Let Us Pray.
Since God knows everything, why do we need to pray?
This is a central theme of the book. Nee contends that “actions in heaven are governed by actions on earth.”
I resisted this notion at first on the basis that God, being omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, in no way needs lowly humans to empower him to take action. God does as he wills, and sometimes he condescends to invite us to participate in some way, but do we “govern” him?
Watchman Nee convinced me, using Scripture (the very best way to convince me of something), that God waits for us to pray and does not act until we join our wills to his in prayer. We have much more power than we think.
In Matthew 18:18, Jesus tells his disciples that what they bind or loose on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven. Binding and loosing is a good subject for a whole blog in itself, but for now, let it suffice to say that when we pray for something good to be loosed or pray for something evil to be bound, God hears from heaven, and because we are praying in agreement with his will, he brings our prayers to pass.
In the next verse of Matthew 18, Jesus promises,
“If two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.”
Even in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus instructs us to ask that God’s kingdom would come and his will be done. Why are we to pray for this if God is going to do it all without our prayers anyway?
Countless other Scriptures support this idea, in both Testaments. Here’s just one more, a familiar one, Philippians 4:6-7:
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
If God plans to give us peace and guard our minds regardless, why are we commanded to present all of our prayers and petitions to him?
We must give up selfish prayers and pray in agreement with the will of God.
Nee writes,
God’s purpose is for us to be so filled with His will that we forget our own interests. He calls us to work together with Him for accomplishing His will. The way of working together is prayer. For this reason, He wants us to learn in Him what His will is regarding all things so that we can then pray according to His will.
Some prayers are rooted in our own will and selfish desires, and Nee claims that these prayers are useless. As we cultivate an intimate relationship with God, we are given to understand his will and can pray effectively and powerfully, because the will of God has been reproduced in us.
Prayers worth praying originate from the mind of God. God reveals his thoughts (i.e., his will) to us through the Holy Spirit. We respond in prayer, returning his will in agreement, and God then accomplishes the work.
Nee cites the prophet Daniel as one who had so disciplined his life and pursued God with such humility and consistency that he learned to think God’s thoughts. When he prayed, heaven listened. God gave him the interpretation of the king’s dream, closed the mouths of hungry lions, and sent an archangel to battle evil forces in the spiritual realm.
Our prayers prepare the way for God, like rails for a train.
Nee’s apt analogy illustrates that God, the train, is all-powerful and sovereignly directed toward a pre-determined destination. But until we lay tracks with our prayers, the train doesn’t move.
To illustrate, Jesus admonishes believers to pray for God to send out laborers into his harvest field (Matt. 9:38), intimating that the more we pray, the more he will call out laborers. Our prayers lay the tracks.
Could it be that our prayerlessness hinders the move of God on the earth? Nee answers,
The more tracks we lay, the more abundant will be the works of God.
How should we pray?
Persistently. Nee presents a lengthy discourse on this topic, analyzing Jesus’ parable of the widow and the unrighteous judge in Luke 18, which Jesus used to show his disciples that they should always pray and not give up. (v.1).
In the usual interpretation of the parable, the judge negatively represents God, and the widow represents God’s people coming to him for vindication against an adversary. Though the judge is a terrible person and doesn’t want to help the woman, he gives in eventually because this widow keeps bothering me.” Nee clarifies,
Jesus portrays the judge in negative ways to underscore the goodness of God…if such a wicked judge is willing to avenge the widow because of her incessant pleading, how much more will God, who is so virtuous, so kind, and so intimately related to us, avenge His children who pray to him unceasingly.”
Until the burden lifts. Have you experienced in prayer meetings times when the same issue is prayed for several times by several people? This may feel redundant, but Nee contends that it is often necessary. We are to keep praying until the burden lifts before moving on to another topic.
Nee reminds us that Paul prayed three times regarding his thorn in the flesh, receiving the answer, “My grace is sufficient for you.” (2 Cor. 12:9). That answer from God lifted his burden, and he could stop praying about it. He could move forward in ministry, with or without the thorn.
Jesus also prayed three times in the garden of Gethsemane before surrendering his will to the Father’s. Finally, his burden lifted, and Jesus was ready to walk toward his redemptive mission on the Cross.
I experienced this phenomenon recently. My prayer partner and I were praying for our siblings. We prayed back and forth, led by the Holy Spirit, sensing his presence. We reached a moment when I knew we had prayed enough, because I felt the burden lift. I sensed that God had grasped it and would take it from there. It was a great sense of sympathetic partnership with the will of our loving God.
The specific number of times we pray about an issue is not as important as praying until we feel the burden lift before moving on.
Until we are vindicated. Nee points out that we often give little notice to the adversary in Jesus’ parable. The widow wouldn’t need to pester this judge if she weren’t being oppressed and wronged by an adversary. Clearly, this adversary represents our common adversary, Satan.
The application here is that we have to know to whom we pray—God; for whom we pray—ourselves and others we care about; and against whom we pray—Satan.
Because prayer is so powerful, Satan constantly works to hinder our prayers.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave in the wilderness, you know how easy it is to become distracted and prayerless—by media, busyness, advertising, responsibilities—you name it.
Sometimes Satan defeats us simply by wearing us down so we don’t feel motivated to pray. He wears us down physically with sickness and fatigue; emotionally with stress and trials, spiritually with temptations and futility. He tempts us to waste our time on worthless things, and we forget to pray.
Whether distracted or worn down, we need to recognize when Satan has been at work. When we discern this, Nee suggests a restorative prayer:
“O God, Your Son was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. How we thank you, for He has destroyed the devil’s works on the cross. But the devil is now again working. Please destroy his work in us, destroy his manipulation over our work, destroy his devices in our environment, and destroy all his works.”
Nee adds this caveat:
Satan is so full of wiles that it is really hard for us to outguess him. We pray, “O Lord, may Your precious blood answer whatever comes from Satan.” (emphasis added).
This is offered by someone who spent the last twenty years of his life in a Chinese prison cell!
In summary, Watchman is adamant that God is always willing to work on our behalf, but he waits for our participation with him in prayer. We are to pray unceasingly and unselfishly about everything.
Things around the entire world are to be subjects of your prayer, and matters in all directions are to be touched through your prayer.
We are his watchmen on the walls, interceding according to the will of God for our families, communities, churches, cities, and countries, like Daniel prayed for Israel from his room in Babylon.
When we pray God’s thoughts back to him, God goes to work, bringing glory to himself by delivering, helping, and healing to his people.
We are right to seek vindication for harm caused by the devil and his minions. We do this by accusing him and praying against him. This is spiritual warfare, in which carnal weapons are completely inadequate. (2 Cor. 19:4).
Jesus assures us through his parable that if we always accuse the devil in prayer, God will avenge us speedily.
In the end, Nee concludes that the central objective of prayers “is to prepare for Christ a glorious church that is conformed to him.”
May we be ever mindful of the importance of prayer!
*https://www.watchmannee.org/
