My son, prayer is a special and distinct ministry. It is true that every blood bought child of Mine must pray, or else his spiritual life will be ruined.
However, I have not called every child of Mine to a distinctive ministry of prayer. In My Word it is written, I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth (Isaiah 62: 6-7).
This call and the setting aside of watchmen could not be for the entire Body. My servant Moses said, “Then once again I fell prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the Lord=s sight and so provoking him to anger. I feared the anger and the wrath of the Lord, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you. But again the Lord listened to me” (Deuteronomy 9:18-19). Of Anna, it was said, ” There was also a prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was a widow for eighty-four years. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying” (Luke 2:36-37). The Twelve apostles said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will hand this responsibility over to them and will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word”( Acts 6:2-4). My Word says of Epaphras: “Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. I vouch for him that he is working hard for you and those at Laodicea and Hierapolis” ( Colossians 4:12-13).
As you can see, these were distinctive ministries of prayer. All were not called to them, but some were called and set apart to function in this way. Prayer was their primary reason for being on earth. Prayer was the one thing that they did to the neglect of other important matters. Prayer was a passion. For them it was prayer or death. They were in the ministry of prayer. They called on God, and called on God, and called on God, and He answered them. They had very specific issues in which they were determined to ensure that God moved, and so they took up the issues with God and pressed on until God answered. They were not caught up with many things. They dealt very little with man. They dealt extensively with the Lord. They knew that if God did not move, all the movements of man were of no consequence. They clung to God. They battled with God. They received answers from the Lord. They had prayer projects and seasons of prayer. They prayed all day and they prayed all night. They laboured to ensure that nothing, not even the slightest cloud, stood between God and them because they were bent on having answers from the Lord. They did not pray about trifles. They took serious matters on and wrestled them through with God. They took issues in which, if the Lord did not answer, there would be disaster and worked their way through to victory. Because these people were able to move God; because they knew that man could not help them, they concentrated on God and concentrated on God and laboured at all cost to please Him. They were secure in God. They knew that there was nothing that man could do for or against them. God was final. God was God and was love and God could be trusted absolutely.
These people constituted the prayer warriors. In a church, while others carried issues with man, they carried issues with God. While others were preoccupied with what man did and said, they were pre-occupied with what God did and said. While others were preoccupied with the possible anger of man, they were afraid lest God should be angry. They were single-eyed. They did not look to God for a moment and in the next moment look to man. They had a permanent gaze at God. He was their all. He was their life. He was their joy. He was everything to them. Actually, they had no choice. They were not asking God to do what man could do. They were asking God to do what man could not do. They were not asking God to step into the gap. They were asking God to do what man would never be able to do, even if he was given one hundred year.. Take for example, they would ask God for power to raise the dead, cause the totally blind to see, cause the totally deaf to hear, cause cancers to disappear, lengthen legs or hands, cause degenerate organs to be restored, cause deformed people to be made normal, cause abnormal growths to disappear, etc. They were asking God to cause people who are opponents of the Gospel to be transformed into radical lovers of the Lord Jesus. They were asking God to move people who did not know about their needs to be moved by God to become suppliers of their needs. They were labouring to move God to alter climatic conditions so that His kingdom would be advanced. They were praying that, by dramatic move of God, lukewarm believers would become red-hot for God. They were asking God that individuals, entire families, entire quarters, entire villages, towns and cities and entire nations be turned by the Holy Spirit from the darkness of sin to the life of purity in Jesus Christ, etc.
Such are men and women in the ministry of prayer. They cannot be moved to leave the place of prayer and do anything else. They know that prayer is the work. All other things are secondary. Because they want the success of the entire Body, they give themselves to prayer, fully persuaded that they are making an indispensable contribution to the success of the entire Body. They are like these specialists who manufacture weapons of war. When war is declared and the entire army goes to war, they remain at the place of the manufacturing of weapons because they know that if they were to fail, the war would be lost. The rest of the Body understands this and encourages them to keep at their task for the good of all.
This is the ministry of prayer. This is the heart of the matter in spiritual warfare. I am the One who calls people to the ministry of prayer. I am the One who sets people apart to the ministry of prayer. It is not a human decision. When I reveal Myself to someone and reveal to that one the fact that the movements of earth only make sense after Heaven has moved, that one will begin to pray. He will begin to move Me so that I would move man, instead of trying to manipulate man. The men and women in the ministry of prayer are called to it by Me. Others who are not called to it will do general praying, and they should not be manipulated to become Prayer Warriors because it will never work. You cannot, by exhortation or encouragement or rebuke, impart that knowledge of God and that burden of God that are indispensable for a life in the ministry of prayer.
When the saints are gathered, some will pray for one, two or three hours, and that is all they can do. Even if they were to stay at the meeting for the next thirty hours they would hardly pray. It will be good if the saints know that not all believers are in the distinctive ministry of prayer. They should be encouraged to all come, and each should pray as far as his knowledge of Me and his partaking of My burden takes him. Those with the distinctive ministry of prayer will come to the place of prayer having prepared and being fully determined to pray. They will pray from the beginning and they will pray again and again. After many hours of praying they will be seeking new opportunities to pray, because they are under the grip of an inner burden. Even if they decided not to pray, they would soon find themselves praying. It is as if they were possessed and, indeed, they are possessed by an incontrollable burden to build God=s Kingdom and pull down the Enemy=s kingdom. Even towards the end of a forty-eight hour prayer session, they are up and doing, praying to Me and praying against the Enemy. They pray with all their might. They pray to ensure that things happen. They choose their words carefully and then utter them as if that was their last time of praying, yet a second afterwards they want to strike again. Because their praying is the overflow of inward burden, they pray alone with the same zeal as when they are praying with others. Alone with Me they press through for answers. In the company of others they pray for answers. They pray with understanding violently. They pray in tongues violently. They pray in the morning violently. They pray in the afternoon violently. They pray at night violently. When they are fresh they pray with all their might. When they are exhausted, they pray with all that is left of their energy.
I have called you to the ministry of prayer. I have appointed you to leadership in the ministry of prayer, and I have given you this special lesson to help you not only to make personal progress in prayer, but also for the purpose of instructing you to handle those who have been called to the distinctive ministry and those who have not been called to the distinctive ministry of prayer, the way I handle them.
The ministry of prayer! The ministry of prayer!! The ministry of prayer!!!
Zacharias Tanee Fomum